Some Sammamish City Council members are hard-pressed to avoid another year of paying for an empty building.

The city is losing a net of $30,000 annually for the vacant property, formerly known as Mars Hill Church. Initially purchased for $6.1 million in March 2015 to be used as a higher education hub, that goal is proving to be 3-5 years out, City Manager Lyman Howard told the City Council during its Tuesday regular meeting.

“We need to do something sooner rather than later,” Councilmember Tom Hornish said. “In my experience, you leave a property to sit, it takes more to get things back up to speed.”

The city could, in the short term, lease the property out until its higher education dream aligns with interested institutions’ budgets.

There are several interested parties: state agencies, nonprofit organizations and private education institutions, Howard said. Two of those are educational entities, though Howard would not say more.

One of those, if approved, would need six months prior to the fall in order to meet its program timeline, Howard said. This means the city would need to approve the contract before the end of March.

The interested party wants to make “quite substantial” capital facility improvements to the property and would likely want to lease it for more than a year, Howard said.

The short-term solution, as Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama-Aramayo said, “would at least stop [the city’s] negative hemorrhaging.”

While all agreed they need to do something, a few council members cautioned against hastily signing a lease and wanted to pinpoint the exact leasing market price before moving forward.

“We don’t want to take a short-term [option] that preludes something that could be very successful long term,” Councilmember Kathy Huckabay said. “The last thing I want to see in the newspaper is that this council has rented below market and we’ve given the gift of public funds to XYZ organization.”

The other education entity interested in the property has a more flexible program timeline, which, if applicable, would give the city and council more time to consider its options.

“We’ve got a decent level of interest,” Howard said.

The city is working with a leasing agency to determine the exact market value price. If all goes well, the city would bring that contract before the council at its next meeting, March 1. (This is not a contract to lease to a specific agency; it is simply the price point at which the city would lease the property.)

In the meantime Mayor Don Gerend and Councilmember Tom Odell are meeting with other interested parties in an effort to fill the empty building, Howard said.

Howard also told council a couple of interested parties have expressed a desire to purchase the property outright, an idea a few council members would consider if nothing else comes of the building.