Redmond’s former city hall remains unused.

More parking spaces could come to downtown Redmond soon. But the city will have to tear down its vacant former city hall building to create them.

Redmond city staff are considering demolishing the old civic building, located on the corner of SW Evergreen Avenue and SW Seventh Street, just a couple blocks away from Redmond’s current City Hall building. If approved by the city council, it would create about 55 new parking spots for Redmond’s quickly developing downtown.

“As Redmond grows, we need to be thoughtful and proactive to provide more off-site parking for our growing downtown,” said Chuck Arnold, manager of Redmond’s urban renewal program.

The city sold the old city hall building to the Redmond Urban Renewal Agency in late 2016, according to city documents. Redmond moved into its new City Hall — a remodeled school building — in early 2017.

After acquiring the old city hall building, the urban renewal agency looked into preserving it for historical purposes. But because it had been dramatically remodeled and altered over the years — at one point, it was a Safeway grocery store — the building didn’t qualify as “architecturally significant,” according to city staff.

The city tried for two years to court developers, hoping someone would build a mixed-use, market-rate housing development at the site, but nothing came of that plan, according to city staff.

Meghan Gassner, an analyst with Redmond’s urban renewal program, called the now-vacant old city hall building “essentially unusable.”

She said developers found the cost of both demolishing and building a multistory building at the site too expensive.

“It just wasn’t going to pencil out,” Gassner said.

In early 2019, the city switched gears, deciding to tear down the old city hall to create a parking lot.

More than 25 stalls will be reserved for the newly renovated SCP Redmond hotel on SW Sixth Street, which sits just a block away, according to Gassner.

The proposed parking lot is also just across the street from Centennial Park, which doubled in size this August.

Gassner, who lives in Redmond and said she frequently visits downtown, said the rapid development of the region has made finding nearby parking tricky.

“Certainly compared to a few years ago, it takes more work to find a close parking spot,” she said. “(The proposed lot) is so close to Sixth Street, that you don’t have to drive around 15 minutes looking for a spot.”

Parking in the new lot will be free, according to city staff.

The Redmond Urban Renewal Agency Board — which has the same members as the Redmond City Council — will vote at its Tuesday night meeting whether or not to pay Bend-based SZABO Landscape Architecture to manage construction and create a design for the proposed parking lot.

There isn’t an estimated cost for the project yet, Gassner said.

The city is open to eventually selling the proposed Evergreen and Seventh Street lot to developers for a new project once the project is finished, Gassner said.

“If another opportunity presented itself, we’re not closed to exploring that,” she said.

Gassner said ideally, the new parking lot will be finished by the end of 2020.

A second downtown Redmond parking lot project — paving over a dirt lot at the corner of SW Evergreen Avenue and SW Fourth Avenue — should be finished by the summer of 2020, Gassner added.