Plans to develop prime property along Erie's Bayfront are moving forward.

As we reported, the McAllister building will be demolished making room, hopefully, for new development.

The McAllister building has sat along Erie's Bayfront since 1928, but this Spring it will be demolished, “It'll be our commercial venue, where we can have restaurants, retail, hopefully get the art gallery back, and things of that nature that will draw visitors and residents to the Bayfront year round,” said Erie Port Authority Director, Brenda Sandberg.

It’s a plan which people we spoke with, who were enjoying the Bayfront Tuesday afternoon, have mixed feelings about, “It's been there ever since I was a kid and I just hate to see it go away,” said Frank Skwaryk of Girard. “But I know the building is falling apart so everything has got to die sooner or later,” Skwaryk continued.

“I think it's going to be good for development, but I wish they could find a way to keep it because it's an old structure, kind of like an icon down here,” said Mary Beth Schrenk of Erie.

That is something that Sandberg says they tried to do, “It is very unfortunate we cannot find a way to re-purpose the building at this point in time,” said Sandberg. “We have looked at all of our options, and unfortunately, unless we're going to use it for a warehouse we really can't re-purpose it,” Sandberg continued.

For years, the Erie Port Authority has tried to get developers to purchase the property and develop it, but it just hasn't worked.

So they hope demolition, along with a 1.6 Million state grant, which will allow for a complete rehab of the dock wall on East Dobbins Landing, will entice developers, “Most of the issues that we do have relate to the condition of the building itself as well as the dock wall, and we're hoping that by taking care of both of those, we'll be able to entice a developer to come down,” said Sandberg.

The Port Authority is taking bids for demolition until early December, it's set to be done by April of 2019. Work on the dock wall will begin shortly after demo is completed, in about May of 2019.