Was anyone else taken aback and left a bit befuddled by St. Louis County Commissioner Peggy Sweeney’s comment last week that “we’re getting nothing out of this,” in reference to the sale of the old county jail in downtown Duluth?

Nothing?

With a logical and sensible “yes” vote by the County Board today, the county can receive payment of $54,000 for a building it has been neglecting for years. That’s cash in hand when the county had been looking at spending at least $300,000 for demolition. Commissioner Sweeney would be correct to point out the county will have to pay some closing costs and to reconnect utilities. But the county will still stand to come out ahead, dollars-wise.

In addition, the sale would put the jail property on the tax rolls, generating, for perhaps the first time, property tax income for the county, the city of Duluth and the Duluth school district. That’s year-after-year-after-year revenue the three governmental entities aren’t now enjoying.

The approval of a sale today just may spare the county an expensive lawsuit, too. Under city law, the jail is protected as a designated historic landmark. A final decision by the county to demolish almost certainly would have been challenged in court.

Blue Limit, a Minneapolis-based real estate and brokerage company with a history of successful, historic-revitalization projects in downtown Minneapolis and Fargo, plans to convert the jail into office space and a conference center. It wants to keep a portion of the cell system intact, and even if that’s being done just so the project can qualify for grants and historic tax credits, the admirable result would be the same: the preserving of history.

And saving the past remains preferable to allowing its loss. The jail is part of Duluth’s Civic Center, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. The cluster of government buildings was designed by celebrated American architect Daniel Burnham, the same Daniel Burnham who popularized neoclassical architecture in the early 20th century with his “White City,” the centerpiece of the 1892 World’s Fair in Chicago. Duluth’s Civic Center remains one of Minnesota’s premier examples of our nation’s City Beautiful Movement of the early 1900s.

“The jail building is an important part of Duluth’s rich architectural heritage,” Penny Clark, chairwoman of the Duluth Heritage Preservation Commission, said yesterday in a statement urging today’s jail sale. “We look forward to working with the new owner to [ensure] that the building will retain its historic integrity as it is adaptively reused and put back to productive use.”

Give Commissioner Sweeney credit for watching out for taxpayers. But what more could she have wanted from a sale most believed would never happen? With the deal can come a community’s support and well wishes as new owners give fresh life to a cherished — and saved — historic structure.