City Hall deal puts old sites in limbo

The deal on a new Vancouver City Hall is set to close today, and over the next year, city officials will begin to plan for their new digs, and also craft evacuation plans for their old ones.

The city is consolidating its administrative employees into the former Columbian building at 415 W. Sixth St., which it snapped up this month for $18.5 million, leaving behind five locations.

The consolidation will save about $1 million in leasing and operating costs starting in 2011, Vancouver Chief Financial Officer Lloyd Tyler said.

Three buildings are leased, and will go back to the building owners when leases expire. But what will be done with two others, the current City Hall and a building near Esther Short Park, isn’t yet clear.

Vancouver owns its vintage-1966 City Hall at 210 E. 13th St., but not the land it’s on. That belongs to Vancouver Public Schools, which leases it to the city for $1 a year.

At its facility at 610 Esther St., the city is in a lease-to-own agreement with nonprofit community development organization National Development Council.

The buildings aren’t needed for administrative employees — they’ll all fit in the first four floors of its new six-story building for at least the next 12 years. The full 118,000 square feet is expected to last for the next 40 years.

But what happens at the old City Hall and Esther Short building next is still very much up in the air, city and school district officials say.

“We’re in the discussion stages and have not made any decisions,” Tim Haldeman said. He is Vancouver director of facilities, risk and property services.

City Hall

In the 1964, the city and the school district orchestrated a swap.

The school district leased the Kiggins Bowl site from the city for $1 a year, and Vancouver in turn leased its City Hall site from the school district for the same price, said Todd Horenstein, the school district’s assistant superintendent for facility support services.

When Discovery Middle School was built at 800 E. 40th St. in 1993, the Kiggins Bowl property was deeded to the district. City Hall stayed under the lease agreement.

The district and city have been in discussions for more than a year about how to put the City Hall property and building under one owner, Haldeman said. Trading the district for other city-owned land, buying the property, or even jointly selling the land and building together may be options, he said.

“We’re doing some research right now,” Haldeman said. “We’re looking at what options and what opportunities there are to that relationship.”

The city is looking at declaring City Hall surplus property, and may ultimately sell it, Haldeman said. The goal, Horenstein said, is to make sure that the land value of 210 E. 13th St. is maintained in public assets somehow, whether through land for a future school or putting sale money back into its capital fund. Sales proceeds will not go into the district’s general operating budget.

Vancouver Public Schools isn’t interested in taking control of City Hall or any other building, Horenstein said. The district has no need for the extra space.

“We’re not particularly interested in being a property manager or owning property that is leased for private use,” he said. “We just have to evaluate what makes the most sense to us in the short and long term.”

Esther Short building

Here, the city has three options: Buy, sell or sublet, Tyler said.

The National Development Council, a large nationwide nonprofit that works with governments on economic development and assists with the purchase of facilities, bought the Esther Short building and signed a lease-to-purchase agreement with Vancouver in 2006.

The city’s lease payments go toward a final sale and Vancouver has the option of buying the building before the contract expires in 2024, he said. Right now, about $5.75 million is left on the building.

So, the city could rent out its rental space, buy it for city uses or create a deal where the city simultaneously buys Esther Short from the NDC and sells it to another buyer, Tyler said.

For the next month or so, the focus will be on the logistics of moving to the new City Hall, he said.

“We’re confirming our options and the direction we want to take,” Tyler said. “We’re at the point of evaluating options (at Esther Short) as well as at City Hall.”

Andrea Damewood: 360-735-4542 or andrea.damewood@columbian.com.