BANGOR – With one of its massive street-level windows smashed and cordoned off with yellow caution tape, the former Dakin’s Sporting Goods building has seen better days on West Market Square.

The downtown landmark has stood vacant for the better part of 15 years other than a brief stay by a coffee shop in the mid-1990s and the occasional political campaign headquarters during an election year.

The long-darkened windows have at least one city councilor growing impatient, however, and even quietly raising the possibility of taking the Broad Street property by eminent domain as a last resort if its owner won’t work with the city to find a more stable use for the gray, hulking building at the end of the block.

And with the city considering a complete – and costly – redesign of the adjacent West Market Square park, the sooner the better, some said.

“It’s another piece of the whole downtown puzzle that we would like to see revitalized,” City Councilor Joseph Baldacci said Tuesday. “My preference would be to do something cooperatively with the owner, but if not, I would support taking it by eminent domain.”

Charles Fitzgerald, owner of the 21,840-square-foot building in the heart of the city’s downtown, said Tuesday afternoon he has plans to restore the facade in coming months and has several tenants interested in a renovated first-floor storefront.

“I’m going as fast as I’m able,” Fitzgerald said from his New York office, where the businessman said he had raised enough money to restore the building’s historic facade by fall.

The city has had a turbulent relationship with Fitzgerald in recent years, in 1995 taking the then-dilapidated Freese’s building – another property owned by the Dover-Foxcroft man – on a matured tax lien.

“I’ve heard that kind of thing before,” he said of the councilor’s apparent interest in acquiring the Dakin’s property. “It’s a pretty awful history.”

Fitzgerald is up-to-date on payment of his property taxes, according to city officials.

The Dakin’s building, valued by the city at $228,300, underwent a face-lift of sorts in 1999, when builders repaired loose mortar and broken windows, painted the facade and put a new roof on the four-story building.

The improvements – especially the new roof – went a long way toward preserving the 102-year-old structure, according to city code enforcement officer Dan Wellington, who toured the building Monday with a local businessman who had expressed interest in the property.

“It’s holding together quite well,” Wellington said Tuesday of the Dakin’s building, one of the last totally vacant buildings remaining in the slowly rebounding downtown.

In the past decade, downtown storefronts slowly have filled up, with the $4.5 million Maine Discovery Museum claiming a huge presence in the newly refurbished Freese’s building on Main Street.

Coupled with revival projects in other downtown buildings – including a significant continuing renovation of the Sweet’s building and other recently completed projects on Hammond, Exchange and Park streets – the transformation of the six-story former Freese’s Department Store could serve as a model for the Dakin’s building, city officials hope.

“We’re trying to keep that train moving,” Baldacci said, noting the city’s involvement – most often helping to secure loans for developers – in several of the projects.