This afternoon's meeting between City Council members, Mayor Bob Duffy, and Renaissance Square officials ended in a stalemate. Both sides seem convinced that they're right, and neither side seems willing to bend.

Council didn't take any action today - and it wasn't expected to. This was billed as a City Council work session, at which Council members and the mayor would present their own revised Ren Square plan, and at which they would ask questions of Ren Square officials and staff.

At the beginning of the long, often contentious meeting in City Council Chambers, Duffy presented a revised plan that drops the theater, reduces the size of the transit center, and - while keeping the transit center on Mortimer Street - reduces the number of bus bays and moves the center farther east on Mortimer Street, away from the historic HH Warner Building, now being developed for housing.

Duffy and City Council members dug in their heels at the meeting, insisting that if the Performing Arts Center isn't dropped and the transit center isn't substantially downsized, they won't approve actions the project needs to proceed.

Transit Authority CEO Mark Aesch and County Executive Maggie Brooks insisted that the changes would kill the project. While city officials agree that they want the Monroe Community College portion of Ren Square, Ren Square officials said changing the plan at this point would forfeit substantial federal funds allocated for the MCC campus. They would have to redesign the project and do another environmental study on the revisions, they said, and that can't be done in time to meet federal guidelines.

"What's been laid out is not Renaissance Square," said Brooks. "It's a completely different project."

And Aesch said that no matter what City Council does, the transit center will be built. "We have the legal authority," he said, "and we have the money to do it." MCC, however, would be lost, he said.

When the meeting ended after about 3 hours, no one seemed to have changed anyone's mind. And City Council seemed to have hit the ball back into Ren Square leaders' court.

Two questions now:

1) Despite what they said at this afternoon's meeting, are Ren Square officials willing to compromise at all?

2) Are the mayor and Council members willing to risk losing the federal funds - in essence, killing the project, including MCC - if Ren Square officials won't make the changes that they and Mayor Bob Duffy want?

You get a sense of the depth of the divide from this statement from Mark Aesch: "Compromise at this point in the process equals change."

And this one from City Council member Dana Miller: "I don't think I'm stretching very much to say you don't have Council's support" for the plan Ren Square officials are sticking to.