Update: The Watertown City Council voted to reject the bids for the project. See our story.

Fix it, level it, or re-purpose it? That's the question City Council and the Thompson Park Zoo Board have been dealing with for over two years.

And now it looks like they might be back to square one. The bids that came back in on the project were double the cost that was expected.

"It's clearly too expensive and beyond the means of us to spend that kind of money on it right now, so we're going to have to look at other options," said Watertown Mayor Jeff Graham.

In 2010, the Zoo Board asked the city to tear down the dilapidated building.  But, because the A-frame was considered a historical Watertown structure, city council wanted to save it.

The plan was to cover the screening and turn it into a year-round educational center, but structural problems and building code requirements drove the price up.

"Bathrooms were needed, a certain amount of space, a certain amount of exits, handicap ramps, the whole bit," explained John Wright, executive director of the New York State Zoo at Thompson Park.

"Before you know it, the floor space is shrinking and the cost is escalating," Graham said.

Now, with a one million dollar price tag on 600 square feet of open floor space, the Zoo says, just tear it down.

"We really want to be able to use this just as a green space, or to give us the space that we would be able to design something and put something here later," Wright said.

"You can say that about any building, 'Why not tear it down?' We've done that in the past and not always been happy with the decision," Graham countered.

Another option Mayor Graham brought up is simply fixing it.  But the zoo says they won't put any animals in the building if city council decides do that.

"The city council cannot dictate what animals we put in here and where we put them," Wright said.

"That being said, we do not feel that this is a proper aviary design," he went on to explain.

City Council will be discussing what to do with the aviary at its meeting Monday night, when they'll try to tackle an issue that's grown wings of its own.