By JAMES FINK
jfink@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1611

Depending on who's talking, the Statler Towers should be saved, mothballed or demolished.

Ask Western New Yorkers about it and they'll likely give a response.

The building serves as a backdrop for an ongoing debate in development, architecture and historic preservation circles: Should a building be saved for sentimental reasons, even if the economics don't make sense?

Buffalo's rich architectural legacy is helping fuel the debate.

There's no easy answer, it seems.

Many people say the Statler should be saved, no matter the cost.

In fact, civic leader Mark Croce is making a $200,000 leap of faith by purchasing the Statler, despite no assurances that he will receive public-sector support or tenants to fill its nearly 800,000 square feet.

"I'm totally opposed to New York state giving any money to the Statler," said Carl Paladino, a Buffalo developer and recent gubernatorial candidate. "We should take the Statler and mothball it for five or six years until the market changes."

James Allen, executive director of the Amherst Industrial Development Agency, said there should be "a regional land or building bank" for structures that the community wants to save.

"The (economics of the) Statler doesn't work right now," Allen said. "But it might in the future."

Then there is St. Barbara Church in Lackawanna, which needs more than $3 million in repairs. The circa 1930 building on Ridge Road was closed as part of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo's Journey in Faith & Grace initiative.

No buyers were found.

Faced with a large repair bill, the Diocese was forced to schedule a demolition. Crews have begin removing asbestos and abating the church, which closed in 2008. Demolition is expected to take place later this year.

Local architect Clinton Brown, a leader in the local preservation community, said demolition should be the absolute last resort.

"There's always a way to make something happen," Brown said. "What's happening in Lackawanna is the extreme. Sometimes good, old buildings die just because no one was willing to step forward."

Brown's firm has a deep portfolio of finding new uses for older buildings, many of which were given up for dead.

Among them:

• The circa 1920s Niagara Falls High School on Pine Avenue was one of 13 buildings the school district wanted to raze. The Niagara Arts & Cultural Center stepped in with a development plan, crafted by Brown, to saved it. The building is now home to more than 70 artists and arts-related groups.

"People in Niagara Falls were saying the school was no good and had no use," Brown said. "We proved otherwise."

• The former Kibler School in North Tonawanda was renovated for a 90-unit senior housing complex run by Western New York Veterans Housing Coalition.

• South Junior High School in Niagara Falls found new life as a market-rate apartment complex.

• The long vacant Victor Hugo Mansion on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo was bought and renovated by Dennis Murphy into the sleek Mansion on Delaware, an upscale hotel.

"It's now the best hotel in Buffalo," according to Brown. "But it sat there empty for decades. It became the poster child for patience. Any building can be saved if the right people with the right approach come along."

Buffalo has an impressive landscape of buildings that were given up for dead but found new life. Developers such as Paladino and Rocco Termini are masters at restoring architecturally or locally significant buildings.

Paladino saved the University Club on Delaware Avenue and former L.L. Berger department store on Main Street, turning the structures into upscale apartments.

Termini did much the same thing with the Webb Building on Pearl Street and the Oak Street School along the Elm-Oak corridor.

Developers can tap a number of public-sector incentives. The federal government has a menu of tax credit options and incentives, as well as New York state. The ECIDA has an adaptive re-use program for older, vacant buildings.

In 2009, the IDA program assisted 10 rehab projects that had a collective private-sector investment of $49.5 million. Last year, it aided 13 building rehab projects that represented $108.1 million in private funds.

"Still, there is only so much we can bring to the table," said John Cappellino, the agency's director of business development. "Ultimately, it will be the marketplace that dictates where that line is between saving a building for sentimental reasons or for economic reasons."

The ECIDA looks closely at a developer's business plan deciding to help a project, he said.

The IDA incentives made the difference when CSS Construction tackled the conversion of the former North Park United Presbyterian Church on Parkside Avenue into the Lofts at Warwick, a 12-apartment complex that includes 5,000 square feet of office space.

Renovations kept the project's price tag at $130 per square foot. Without it, costs might have been 42 percent higher at $185 per square foot.

"Projects have to be financially feasible," Cappellino said. "We are not going to sign up for ‘forever subsidies.' These projects have to support themselves, otherwise you are just postponing the inevitable."