But I didn't anticipate that an editorial in the Asbury Park Press would be the proverbial cannon shot that blew me back into column-writing. (Okay, okay - so cut me a break! I'm a little rusty here....)

That October 20 editorial -- entitled "Help Save the Savoy" -- exhorted everyone from Bruce Springsteen to the city council to help the newly formed ArtsCap (short for Arts Council of Asbury Park) in its bid to purchase the downtown Kinmouth Building and restore the Savoy Theater.

ArtsCap wants to use the complex as a cultural center for local art groups and education programs, and envisions it as the hub of an Asbury Park Cultural Arts District that is being planned with the Monmouth County Arts Council and the Asbury Park Urban Enterprise Zone.

The group has been given a one-month extension to raise a $250,000 down payment on the building.

And, at the risk of being banned from all future First Saturday sales, I'm fervently hoping they miss that deadline.

Don't get me wrong: In 1996, Dave and I opened our own gallery in the almost deserted downtown, and spent the next five years helping to stage artists' real estate tours, organize art festivals, and fight off land speculators while promoting Asbury Park as the next downtown arts mecca. So I certainly believe in miracles.

And ArtsCap is doing all the right things by hiring a planning consultant and working with the county arts council to develop its long-range goals. But taking on a crushing real estate commitment at a time when the essentially unfunded, months-old group is still holding community planning meetings seems like the wrong step at the wrong time for any number of reasons.

So let me play the Tommy DeSeno devil's advocate role here and throw out a few of my major concerns:

Like everything else in Asbury Park, the selling price of the Kinmouth Building has skyrocketed over the last few years. But we're heading into a softening real estate market now, and the negotiated price - which has to be paid off within a year - is an extremely sobering $5.1 million.

And that's just the beginning: ArtsCap estimates that restoration costs will run another $25 million.

Where will the money come from? During my time on the city council, I worked with a variety of arts-related groups -- including one long-established, financially secure, and very determined organization -- whose goals were similar to ArtsCap's. When they did detailed research, each group discovered just how daunting it is to keep even an established theater solvent, and just how little public and private money is available.

And with a string of natural disasters causing unprecedented hardship here and abroad (including along our own shores), it's no secret that we're not living in boom times for arts-related non-profits right now. Even savvy, for-profit companies like LL Bean are rushing this year's Christmas promotions because they know the public will be much less likely to splurge on nonessential items once those first, outrageous home-heating bills arrive.

And with competition from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, the cost of construction materials will certainly soar.

Then there's the sticky historic preservation question. (Cue the land mines....) The Savoy Theater opened in 1911 as a live entertainment venue, and has hosted popular movies, summer theater and live burlesque shows over the years. There's even a delicious local rumor that James Cagney proposed to his wife there.

It ended its career somewhat ingloriously in 1976 as an adult movie house.

But the "historic" Savoy (with its relatively unadorned interior and long-missing vertical marquee) is essentially gone: Once it closed, the roof failed and the theater suffered extensive water damage.

The current owners added a new roof and an acoustic tile ceiling years ago, but all the historic theater seats had to be recently removed because of continuing mold problems. How much really remains?

And what about other development nightmares, such as parking? As any downtown developer, retailer or resident will tell you, that's a major consideration - and an eye-popping expense - that will have to be squarely dealt with.

Which brings me to the core issue: If ArtsCap's primary mission is "creating a support network for artists..., promoting arts education and ... preserving the integrity of Asbury Park's artistic, architectural, historic and cultural heritage", then we definitely need them -- whether it's to support the downtown arts revival and our exploding music scene, or to question (as I will in an upcoming column) why the beachfront redevelopers have not yet begun restoring our most significant cultural resources: Convention Hall and the Paramount Theatre.

And the last thing I want to see is anyone on the ArtsCap board -- including hard-working and good-hearted friends like John Brown, Pam Lamberton and Diane Raver -- buried alive under a crushing debt with an impossible mission and not enough people to support them. (And we've all seen that happen here.)

I'd rather (choke!) see the property converted to condominiums than put them -- and Asbury Park's art community -- through that anguish.

Which brings me to the one suggestion I've heard that may hold real promise. (And, no, I don't mean using the $200,000 that Bruce Springsteen specifically donated for a city-owned, city-run senior and recreation center -- but that's a topic for another day.)

What I'd love to see is an all-out drive by ArtsCap, the city, the Monmouth County Arts Council and others to identify a corporation to purchase the building as commercial space and donate the theater and a floor of offices -- along with some seed money - to a consortium of local art groups for the kind of project ArtsCap envisions.

Surely there's got to be some handsome tax incentives in there somewhere.

And maybe it would give some of the companies that left Asbury Park in its leaner days -- like JCP&L, which moved out in the 1990s -- an opportunity to rejoin and support the city that helped give them their start.