OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford. The building located at 10-14 East Main St. has an uncertain future as officials continue discussions on possible plans for the structure.

BROCTON — The years-long saga of 10-14 East Main St. still has an unclear climax.

“The county is in the process of negotiating to get this building taken down at the lowest cost to the village of Brocton,” said Peter Clark, village attorney, in response to residents’ questions about the site at a Brocton Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday.

“I was told ‘it’s going well,’ but that doesn’t tell me much,” Trustee Art Miller said, soon after adding, “A lot of people are asking and I was wondering myself.”

Brocton officials said Chautauqua County controls 10 E. Main St. through a tax foreclosure, but does not have full ownership of it. Cave’s Deli is located next door at 14 E. Main St. and the county is attempting to buy it from the restaurant’s owners.

After the county has full control of the site, it intends to offer it to the Chautauqua County Land Bank for demolition. The building is in a dilapidated condition and a condemnation notice from the code enforcement office is visible on the window of 10 E. Main St., a former hardware store.

Trustee Carol Horlacher denied a rumor going around Brocton: that the village bought the former Green Arch Diner as part of a plan to relocate Cave’s Deli there. “We are out of it,” she said.

Miller said the village was due to renew rental of a chain-link fence outside the building, put there to keep pedestrians away from the unstable structure. As far as removing it, he said, “It’s a dangerous situation. I’m not going to make that call.”

“Probably it will take 30 or 60 more days going through,” Horlacher said of the county’s attempt to buy the site. “It’s going to be a period of time before it comes down, so it behooves us to keep the fence up.”

The board wound up agreeing unanimously to rent the fence for three more months, at a cost of $1,500.

Toward the end of the meeting, Miller criticized the village for spending so much time in recent months and years on this particular building, when there are other worn-down structures in Brocton that should be addressed.

“We’ve got to focus on more than one thing,” he said.