[FONT=Verdana]The price tag to demolish Rochester's Midtown Plaza has jumped by $15 million in just about a week. The city now says it'll cost $65 million.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]Just nine days after Governor Spitzer announced the state would pay to raze the 45-year-old downtown shopping mall, the cost has shot up 30 percent. City council was briefed on the higher cost of demolition behind closed doors Thursday night.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"We suspected all along that the $50 million was just a benchmark. It was a reasonably close number," said City Council member Bill Pritchard. [/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]Pritchard heads up the center city committee.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"You know, you let the guys at the top make the big announcement. It's all the worker bees that put the final details, in this case, the cost of demolition. The $65 million didn't surprise me. And in fact the price could go a little higher," said Pritchard.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]Part of Spitzer's announcement was that Rochester's PAETEC Corporation would build its new corporate headquarters on the eight-acre Midtown site. PAETEC chairman and CEO is Arunas Chesonis. He doesn't see the new higher Midtown demolition costs as an obstacle to building his new world headquarters.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"We're pretty cautious conservative people at PAETEC," said Chesonis, who is also the company's founder. "We made it through the whole telecom and dot-com era without filing bankruptcy, and without blowing up the company or destroying shareholder value or defaulting on loans. So we have a pretty conservative view of how long this process is going to take."[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]Chesonis talked about when the PAETEC tower is built.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"And we'll always make sure there's protection in there that the building it built for a multi-tenant opportunity so that if we were ever purchased down the road, people can sublet that very easily," said Chesonis. "You just do prudent things like that. The building that we're in now was designed for all three floors to have multiple tenants."[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]But with the telecom industry changing so rapidly, we asked Chesonis if PAETEC will even be here 15 years from now.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"We don't try to run the business to be bought or sold or up for auction," said Chesonis. "All we do is run the business for the long term, pretend you're going to be here for generations, just like Wegmans and other organizations. And when you do that you run a good business."[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]Councilman Pritchard says the city would not begin demolition of Midtown until it had all the money necessary.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]With two new company acquisitions, PAETEC now has about 4,000 employees.[/FONT]