With the purchase of property on the northwest corner of Franklin Avenue and Second Street, the city of Bend has acquired enough land to build a new City Hall, affordable housing and a public plaza.

The Bend City Council on Wednesday approved the $3.5 million purchase of three parcels totaling a little more than half an acre, which adds to several nearby parcels the city has purchased in the past several years. Those include the old Rainbow Motel, now a homeless shelter, and the former Bend Oil Co. site near First Street.

Bend City Manager Eric King said none of the existing facilities are suitable for City Hall, which will need to be at least 100,000 square feet, according to previous city assessments. But together, the parcels make up a little more than 3 acres, the amount the city wanted to move forward with the development.

“We wanted to do more than just a City Hall and really redevelop that area,” King said.

Further planning will determine exactly which piece of property will host the new city headquarters.

The goal is to move into a new City Hall by 2030, King said.

The city is in the process of hiring a financial adviser to work with a developer to build the housing, which could be leveraged to help pay for construction of City Hall to avoid asking taxpayers to fund the project, King said.

Alongside the purchase, the city sold 94 acres outside the city limits in northeast Bend at Juniper Ridge, an industrial area where the city is building a new public works campus. The land was sold for $8 million to Taylor Brooks, a partnership between Brooks Resources and Taylor Development, owner of the central district parcels.

Money from that sale will go toward the City Hall development.

The site is closer to the geographic center of Bend than the current City Hall on Wall Street, King said. It’s also in an area envisioned as a future urban hub of housing, business and walking and biking routes — the Bend Central District.

Redevelopment is fueled by an urban renewal district encompassing the central district. Urban renewal money is helping to pay for transportation upgrades to connect the central district to downtown, including a $30 million to $40 million footbridge spanning the Bend Parkway and railroad tracks on Hawthorne Avenue and new bike lanes and safety improvements on the Franklin Avenue undercrossing.

Urban renewal is projected to generate nearly $60 million for infrastructure and $20 million for affordable housing initiatives, according to the central district website.

The city also recently finished a safety makeover to Greenwood Avenue, and construction is underway to add sidewalks to Second Street.

The vision for a new City Hall development is “really encouraging” for the central district said Corie Harlan, chair of the advisory board for the urban renewal area and director of the cities and towns program for Central Oregon LandWatch, the conservation group that has advocated for the central district initiative.

Harlan hopes the new City Hall, along with the transportation projects, will spur more private development in the area. Creating a “complete community” in the Bend Central District — with housing and transportation options, nearby services and access to nature — is critical to Bend’s growth, she said.

“It’s these pieces of the puzzle you start to fill in, they bring that full vision to life,” she said.