Ladies and gentlemen, we have a plan. It was Monday afternoon when Rocco Termini unfolded the drawing on a table in downtown’s Sea Bar. He pointed to the pen-and-ink vision of a rejuvenated AM&A’s building and said, “This is what we should do.”

A lot of people have ideas. Not many have the track record of Termini. The trim, tanned developer who—with his pastel crew-neck sweaters and wire-frame glasses, looks like a well-preserved prep schooler—has done more than anyone to repopulate downtown. From the Ellicott District to the Webb Building to—next up—the Lafayette Hotel, Termini is the king of transforming empty 19th century spaces into upscale apartments. He does not just talk—he does.

It would be nice if most of our public officials—starting with the mayor— were half as creative. Termini’s current brainstorm: Instead of putting Erie Community College’s new science-oriented building on the North Campus in Amherst—an idea that has yet to fly— place it in the vacant AM&A’s, on the shoulder of ECC’s City Campus.

It matters, because the idea is bigger than one building. Putting this downtown instead of in Amherst uses taxpayer dollars to reverse sprawl, instead of feeding it. It connects ECC students to the growing High Street medical corridor. It piggybacks on the Washington Street resuscitation and fuels downtown resettlement. It continues the revival of ECC’s main campus at the county’s geographic center. It ends the buy-in on the bad idea of a tri-campus community college—the only one in the state.

Not bad, for one building. This is no castle in the sand. Termini

says he can get $7.5 million of historical tax credits for the AM&A’s redo, which saves the same amount from ECC’s pockets. Behind him are several state legislators, who two months ago flexed their muscles to hold up $15 million in state money for the project.

“We don’t have veto power,” said Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, who Thursday, with State Sen. Mark Grisanti, sent a letter to ECC President Jack Quinn pushing the downtown option. “But if there is not a comfort level on this with the local delegation, the money will not be included in the [state] budget.”

Termini is not looking to make a killing. He would sell the county the building space at cost. But he knows that ECC expanding in the city would prop up his nearby developments and speed downtown revival. And that helps everybody.

“Do this, with what we already have and what we have coming, and it finishes three complete blocks downtown,” Termini said. “Then you put in small restaurants, then retail.”

This would be city-focused development straight out of the Regionalism 101 textbook. Unfortunately, most local politicians are behind on their reading. The idea also feeds into the pull of downtown for under-25s—as seen by the multitude who live downtown or trek to Chippewa Street from the burbs on weekends.

This is not the way Quinn sees it. He wants to prop up the decaying Amherst campus, in hopes of dissuading Northtowns kids from heading to Niagara County Community College, with the county subsidizing the exodus.

To me, building in Amherst is the easy, tight-focus answer that would cement the balkanization that holds us back. Termini has a plan—and it’s bigger than one building.

desmonde@buffnews.comnull