As officials prepare a campaign to refurbish and revitalize Decatur’s downtown, they say some of the prime locations for development are city owned.

Located on Second Avenue Northeast in downtown Decatur, the former Robinson Furniture building would be an ideal location for a Calhoun Community College fine-arts satellite campus, said Downtown Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Rick Paler.

Built in 1928, the 31,600-square-foot structure features wide-open spaces, sturdy floors, and it is only a few hundred feet from the Princess Theatre Center for the Performing Arts.

In addition, Paler said, the city owns it.

“It just presents us a really great opportunity to develop it, and it’s important that we are able to develop it,” he said.

Paler said city-owned properties are easier to control and thus easier to develop.

Purchased by the city in 1995 for $10, the building was once used as a furniture store.

With no definite plans for the structure, Paler said the authority will focus first on cleaning out the building and throwing away old office furniture the city has accumulated there over the years.

He also said the authority would invest time and money in refurbishing the building’s front and planting grass, shrubs and trees in an adjacent empty lot also owned by the city.

“We’re not spending a lot of money on it. We’re just making it more presentable for possible development,” he said.

Even if Calhoun is not interested in the property, it would be well suited to a number of other applications for redevelopment, said Mayor Don Kyle.

“Depending on the imagination and financial ability of a developer, I think it would make an interesting nightspot,” he said.

Kyle said the city once had an entrepreneur interested in turning the old furniture building’s ground floor into a restaurant and the upper floor into condominiums, but the proposal never came to fruition.

Whatever happens to the Robinson building, the property is not the only city-owned site for development, Paler said. In fact, the city owns most of that block.

Other unused structures owned by the city include the old Cinema Equipment and Concession Supply building next to the Robinson building. Kyle said that property would likely be more valuable if the dated structure were removed.

The city also owns the old Elks Lodge and the old Decatur Utilities warehouse on the west side of the block, along First Avenue Northeast.

Both Kyle and Paler said they were unsure how valuable those structures would be for development, but it is important the city clean them out and evaluate the properties for development opportunity.

Kyle said it might be more financially feasible to demolish both of those structures, rather than to attempt refurbishment and alteration.

Paler said the authority will inventory the city-owned properties and other downtown properties available for development. The inventory would be posted on the authority’s Web site in the hopes of attracting new businesses downtown.

“Right now, we’ve got a plan and an idea, and we’re going to go in that direction until either we accomplish that or we find that we need to go in another direction,” he said.

Other city-owned properties on the block include a parking lot adjacent to the old Elks Lodge and a parking lot adjacent to The Brick Deli on East Moulton Street.

Kyle said there has been discussion of breaking up the lot adjacent to the Elks Lodge to create more green space downtown, but the lot appears to be getting regular use.