New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang wants to tear down the 187,000-square-foot Fairhaven Mills building, but local preservationists aren’t convinced. According to SouthCoastToday.com‘s Joe Cohen, a developer interested in the site says the building isn’t worth renovating (and there aren’t enough state historical tax credits available to change his mind).

Lang says he would “rather honor the river than the mill,” by getting rid of the building and providing better public access to the Acushnet River. (That does raise an interesting preservation question. Should public access to a river, harbor, or mountain ever take priority over saving a building, now matter how architecturally significant? Nature does have the prior claim, after all.) The mayor also reeled off instances where he was on the side of the preservationists:

“My administration fought for Cliftex, Victoria Riverside, Wamsutta, Whaler’s Place, the Casa da Saudade, Ingraham and other schools, the whale oil refinery on the waterfront and the ice house at Revere Copper,” Lang said. “We’ve done as much or more than anyone in the city” to fight for preservation in recent years.

But SouthCoastToday.com columnist Jack Spillane points out that preservationists may be at a distinct disadvantage in the Whaling City:

…when the City Council gives its OK to jettisoning Fairhaven, it will be exercising a power that no other city council in Massachusetts possesses.

Because only in New Bedford is a political body like the City Council allowed to set itself up as the arbiter of historic preservation decisions.

“It’s basically unheard of to have this go before a City Council,” said Chris Skelly, director of local government programs for the Massachusetts Historical Commission. “I don’t know anybody else that does that.”