“JCC is not leaving the north end of the county. We intend to stay there, it’s a question of where do we stay and what does it look like,” he stated.

JCC is in the process of selling its campus and workforce development space on Route 60 in the town of Dunkirk. However, DeMarte said it’s eying a move to SUNY Fredonia.

“We started conversations some time ago, accelerated in April, to move campus offerings to SUNY Fredonia,” he said. “We expanded talks to include the workforce development program.”

SUNY Fredonia’s College Council discussed a JCC move to campus at its spring meeting, and it sounded imminent then.

Jamestown Community College has a buyer for its property on Route 60.

However, DeMarte said Thursday he and his leadership team are meeting regularly with SUNY Fredonia President Stephen Kolison and his team about the move.

“As you can imagine, there’s a lot of detail to be worked out,” he said — not only with SUNY Fredonia, but with the wider SUNY system and with the national college accreditation body.

“The two leadership teams are picking this apart, detail by detail, with the goal of having something to share early in 2026,” DeMarte said.

DeMarte commented that he questioned whether the Route 60 campus, a former parochial school with a sizable side building added about 30 years ago, was right for JCC since he came on board as president.

There was a plan in place through Dunkirk’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative to move the JCC north county presence to the Graf Building on Central Avenue. JCC backed out because it was “not financially sustainable,” DeMarte said.

The Jamestown Community College Foundation, legally a separate entity from JCC, owns five of the seven parcels that compose the Route 60 campus. The foundation’s parcels include all of the buildings.

DeMarte said the foundation and JCC had an understanding that they would sell only part of the property — but would sell it all if a buyer was interested. It turns out that someone does want the whole property.

“We have an accepted offer on the property,” DeMarte said. It’s on schedule to close within a couple months. With the closing still looming, DeMarte was reluctant to name the buyer.

The apparent sale of the property has fueled persistent rumors that JCC is leaving the north county. DeMarte reached out to the OBSERVER “to calm the nerves that we are leaving the north end of the county.”

Rather, “we want to get back to where we were before with our offerings.”