To say Neil Bauman is the most colorful figure in the Renaissance Square debate is putting it mildly.

Always loud, often brash, sometimes profane, Bauman is a significant figure in the project's eminent domain proceedings. His family has owned 1 North Clinton Avenue and 224-226 Main Street for 60 years, he says - his son's ebaum's Real Estate Rentals LLC owns the buildings. Renaissance Square's planners want that land for the project's theater.

Bauman's fuming over the county's plan to take the properties, knock them down, and leave a landscaped plaza. (The theater's not fully funded and it's not certain that it will ever be built.)

"They finally came out and said, ‘We're going forward without the performing arts center,''' he says. "Fuck you. That's my property. You ain't making it a grassy knoll."

Bauman introduced his own plan for the property, and it includes middle-income housing and retail, with a $50-million price tag. Whether he has the chops to pull it off is another question; Bauman's biggest project to date is a $5 million commercial and office development in Webster. But he insists he can do it.

Just last week, Bauman offered to purchase the property of fellow Main and Clinton land owner, Phyllis Cohen. He's known Cohen for a long time and can make a better offer than Ren Square leaders can, he says. But there's some self-interest involved, too.

"I see a big opportunity here to acquire some more properties on a project that I desperately want to be a part of, and I'm going to take it," Bauman says.

At the same time, Bauman says he's aware that if eminent domain proceedings go through, he'll probably take a loss on the buildings.

But Bauman sometimes says things that border on the bizarre and-or clash with the facts. Take his explanation for why he didn't come out with his plans sooner: "Because it wasn't until last year that these morons finally announced their final plan. How could I possibly react to a plan that they never announced?"

His point seems to be that the plan to proceed with demolition without funding for the theater was acknowledged for the first time when the federal environmental assessment was released last year. But the basic concept of Ren Square has been the same since 2005.

And Bauman recently told the media that he was considering a run for office - but didn't specify which one. He later clarified that he's interested in the county executive's office.

"I am beyond upset," he says. "I'm beyond infuriated. I feel that the people that are running this are doing a horrible disservice to this community, and I want to try and stop it."

But the next time the seat is up is in 2011, and the fate of Ren Square will surely be determined by then.

Bauman talked about Renaissance Square and his proposal during a recent interview. The following is an edited version of that conversation.

What, specifically, is it that you want to do at the corner of Main and Clinton?

I would like to put in, in place of where the performing arts center was supposed to go, two or three buildings of middle-income housing and retail. If MCC comes in and builds this complex, they're not just talking students; they're talking 4,500 people a day are going to come into this one square block; they need traditional retail. We need a drug store, we need restaurants, you need a book store.

What kind of shape are your buildings in?

Horrible. As bad as they can be. Just an absolute mess. None of them have heat, there's water leaks, the floors have rotted away. The upper floors have been uninhabited for 50 years. There isn't even access to those upper floors.

Did you ever see that Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds"? That's what it looks like up there. The windows got broken, there's about 40,000-50,000 pigeons that live up there.

Why haven't you kept them up?

The only reason that downtown is the way it is, is because of this sword of Damocles of eminent domain. When, for the last 11 years, every year they're going to building Renaissance Square, how much do you want to invest in this property?

Where are you going to get the money to do this? Have you started talking to bankers?

The financing is the least of my troubles. I have this deal financed. Despite what people may think, the financing is the absolute easiest thing to do.

Some people think that you've come up with this plan simply to drive up the value of your property for eminent domain.

I'm not trying to raise the value on my property. I don't want to sell it. I want the Bauman name to remain on Main and Clinton for another 60 years and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that happens.

How many times has Mike Power [Ren Square's spokesman] said, the county said that the only reason I'm doing this is to increase the value of my property? Is he some kind of a freakin' nut? My property's not for sale. I'm fighting to keep my property. Where do these things get started? It's insanity.