Well, well, well.

The most popular part of Ren Square was the new downtown home for Monroe Community College. And now we learn from the Democrat and Chronicle that MCC needed more space than it was going to get in Ren Square.

With Ren Square dead at last, MCC - whose downtown student population is growing - is looking for a new site, one that will let it expand.

Brian Sharp's front-page piece in this morning's D&C contains this delicious tidbit: lack of growing space was "a shortcoming of the Renaissance Square location that MCC President Anne Kress said the college would be ‘foolish' to repeat this time around."

And for the record, let's review the MCC downtown-campus history one more time. One of last year's big scandals was the attempt by local Republicans to install former County Legislator Bill Smith as president of MCC. But that's not the first time there's been a connection between the college and local Republicans.

MCC has been renting space in the Sibley Building, but since the late 1990's, it has been planning to build its own downtown complex. The first site selected was property on the southeast corner of Main Street and Plymouth Avenue - owned, perhaps just coincidentally, by Peter Formicola, a former County Legislator with long ties to the Monroe County Republican Party. Buildings on that site were demolished, and the county initially used the space as a staging area for the jail expansion.

The county later abandoned the Main and Plymouth plan, in favor of the Ren Square location. Again, perhaps just coincidentally, there were connections between the owners of the site and the Republican Party.

At the beginning, the college was to have occupied two Ren Square parcels: the Granite Building - a historic office building at the corner of Main and St. Paul - and the glass-fronted Gateway Building, formerly the home of Blue Cross-Blue Shield and, in another lifetime, the old Edwards Department Store.

The Granite Building is partially owned by Harris Beach, a law firm whose partners include well-connected Republicans (among them, for a brief time, Bill Smith). Harris Beach has long wanted to get rid of its interest in the building, and Ren Square could have taken it off of its hands. During the down-sizing of Ren Square, the Granite Building was excised from the plans.

The Gateway Building was owned by developer Max Farash, yet another well-connected Republican. He donated it to the county, taking a substantial property tax load off of his shoulders.

Is there anything wrong with a big public project being built on land owned by well-connected Republicans or Democrats? Nope. It's just one of those interesting little threads in this story that has dominated local news for so many years.

Also for the record: Nostalgia led me to look through my drawer-full of files on Ren Square and its predecessor, Central Station, the original proposal for the bus station.

County and transit-authority leaders have made a big to-do about the mayor and City Council coming up with objections "at the last minute." OK: The mayor should have spoken out sooner, or louder, or something. And he did indeed vote for "conceptual plans" and "moving to final design" resolutions that I bet he wishes he hadn't. The fact is, though, city officials and downtown neighborhood leaders had been fighting the bus station component for years.

Among my collection of Ren Square artifacts is an April 2000 letter from then-City Council President Lois Giess to then-Representative Tom Reynolds. Reynolds had just announced he would seek $13 million in federal funds for Central Station. In his announcement, Reynolds said it was clear to him that "local community leaders" wanted the bus station. But, Giess wrote, City Council - "the elected leaders in Rochester" - hadn't been consulted, and Council members had a good number of concerns about the project.

Among those concerns: loss of taxable properties, the negative impact on nearby developable properties, traffic flow, "and most importantly," land use.

"There are several major land-use plans for this area of our City Center," wrote Giess. "None of them envision a transit center."

"We have consistently urged R-GRTA to consider another site," wrote Giess.

Eventually, Council and then-Mayor Bill Johnson agreed to the bus station as part of Renaissance Square. But they insisted that the bus station be put underground, to protect nearby properties. In the end, Ren Square officials decided they couldn't afford an underground station, and after architect Moshe Safdie designed a camouflaged above-ground station, the officials decided they couldn't afford it, either.

Now, they have to start from scratch with the bus station. They insist that they'll simply move the station 80 or so feet north. But that puts it right next to a residential building. And that - as Ren Square officials know full well - simply ramps up the city's concerns.

Are they mad enough to try to do it anyway? Maybe. But city officials won't be quiet this time. And this time, County Executive Maggie Brooks and transit authority chief Mark Aesch can't say they weren't forewarned.