To the realist, the Watermark Tower is a 10-story eyesore that's rooted at Anniston's historic center. It's dilapidated, vacant, scorched and scarred — and the most prominent man-made feature of the city's modest skyline.

To the dreamer, it's the future of downtown Anniston. Eyesore? Of course. An embarrassment for the city? Sure; it's been five years since that weekend fire. A frustrating visual first impression for visitors? Yes.

But dreamers can see past that.

They understand the building's historic value, its place in Anniston lore. And as they stand among the soot and debris and gaze out the broken top-floor windows, they can visualize the reconditioned tower as a catalyst for countless — and desperately needed — positives for the city's central business district.

Imagine the building originally known as the Liles Building fully rebuilt, with arcade-style retail space along the 10th Street side and prime-location offices throughout its floors. Imagine former tenants returning, and new ones relocating downtown. Imagine the removal of the burnt postcard from the city's core. Imagine the civic boost it would give to everything Anniston: a signal of progress, a sign of downtown growth, a vision of improvement, not decay.

Yeah, sure, the news isn't that rosy. The Watermark Tower is a $7.2 million renovation project, and trying to find a bank that'll back such a restoration these days is like finding a Hummer with Prius-style gas mileage.

For now, the tower's developers — the Anniston Water Works and Sewer Board and Community Development Partners — are waiting, just as Annistonians have done since a Saturday night fire in August 2003 shuttered the landmark. There's guarded optimism that financing will come soon, though everyone's definition of "soon" is wildly different.

So, everyone's waiting.

Still.

In the meantime, it's quite compelling to climb the darkened, narrow stairwells of what many still call the old AmSouth Building and see what construction crews will face.

The first thing you notice when you enter the first floor — the bank's lobby — is the lack of fire damage. It's a layman's mistake; you think fire, and you expect soot and charred debris and twisted metal. That's not there.

Instead, as Jim Miller of the water board explained, the damage increases as you climb the stairwells. The fire was on the top floor, and water damage in most cases was confined to only a few floors directly underneath.

That means the tower's first seven floors are suffering from age and neglect, but water damage is minimal. Its concrete floors and walls are in good shape. Ceiling tiles are damaged or gone; same, too, for the carpet. Like bark falling from a tree, paint's peeling everywhere: off office walls, in stairwells, from doors.

As you ascend, you begin to notice the tower's human remnants, items left behind when tenants went home on the Friday before the fire. It's an eerie feeling, and it gets more pronounced the higher you go.

On the second floor, an old potted plant sits on an office floor, its dried, brown leaves still resting where they fell years ago. A computer printer, dumped in the hallway. A heating unit pulled from the wall. The bank's executive kitchen and "Downtown Room" — its boardroom — still exist. It's there where you begin to understand how underwater explorers of the Titanic feel as they float through its wreckage.

On the fifth floor, just inside the stairwell doors that lead to some of the many former law offices, are boxes of books — The Code of Alabama — large and blue, covered in dust, left behind.

The yellowed walls of the stairwell turn sooty and are streaked with water stains as you pass the eighth and ninth floors. Paint chips and debris crackle under your shoes. Elevator doors are covered in thick, grayish-black dust.

On the 10th floor — "ground zero," Miller calls it — is a fascinating, compelling picture. Eerie doesn't describe it. The offices where the fire began on the building's west side are black, sooty, covered in debris. Almost nothing is recognizable. Metal light fixtures hang from the ceiling, rusted and twisted. Heaven wooden beams support the entire room. A few office rugs are still intact, though blackened. A red fire extinguisher rests on the floor. All is charred. Most of the windows are open portals to the city. You can hear the sounds of downtown Anniston below.

On the floor's east side — away from the fire's origin — are more offices, their tenants gone, but their furniture and files still inside. It's Anniston's ghost town in the sky: working spaces untouched for five years: personal effects on desks (an empty fifth of Jim Beam alongside a blue bottle of Mylanta), copies of The Star from August 2003, yellow sticky notes penned with phone numbers, bookshelves still holding volumes, a leather attachι on the floor, open, empty. A fine layer of soot covers everything.

Only the people are missing.

Before leaving, Miller and I talked about the importance of having a revitalized Watermark Tower — not for the water board, but for the city. We talked about cities' souls — their downtowns — and how this tower is a quintessential portion of the soul of Anniston. "(This project) will signal how Anniston and Calhoun County will go in the future," Miller said. "Will we go up or will we go down? To think otherwise is to not understand the lessons of history."

The realists and dreamers may differ on the path for downtown Anniston. But maybe both can share office space in this renovated tower, where they can politely disagree with each other over coffee as they gaze out over the city below.