The city of Sammamish named Central Washington University as one potential option to fill the vacant building formerly known as the Mars Hill Church.

The university is one of several interested entities Sammamish officials have recently been in talks with to lease out the building, which the city purchased in March 2015 for $6.1 million.

“[Central officials] have been optimistic in their conversations with us,” City Manager Lyman Howard told the Sammamish City Council Tuesday. “[Central’s plan] most closely matches the intent council had when it originally purchased the property.”

The council intended the property, located at 120 228th Ave. NE, in close proximity to all three of the city’s high schools, to be a higher education hub, ideally bringing in high schoolers enrolled in Running Start and adults looking to further their education.

Despite initial council excitement and a letter of intent from three interested colleges, the city has yet to lease the building, as those colleges could not afford to.

The city is most interested in pursuing Central because university officials have expressed the desire to bring things like Running Start, developmental classes, professional recertification courses and English language classes to the plateau as soon as the fall, Howard said.

“This is very exciting,” Mayor Don Gerend said. “It’s an accredited public institution.”

The university, based in Ellensburg, is “co-located with community colleges in Edmonds, Everett, Des Moines, Steilacoom/Puyallup, Kent, Yakima, Moses Lake and Wenatchee, where students can complete baccalaureate degrees without leaving their communities,” according to its website.

Gerend said Central wouldn’t need to partner with another community college to occupy the former Mars Hill property.

Howard also mentioned the university is “very much interested in community partnerships,” with the Lake Washington School District, the Issaquah School District, Eastside Catholic School, the YMCA and other area community colleges.

This is all pending on talks between Central officials, who have been working with the city, and the university president and its board of trustees, Howard said. Those talks are scheduled for later this spring. If those do not go as planned, the university would discuss the matter again in the fall, he said.

Central is also in the beginning stages of establishing a community survey in order to identify the need for higher education on the plateau, which the city also hopes to learn from.

Community outreach was one thing Councilmember Christie Malchow said she wanted more of, especially concerning the possibility of added traffic to 228th Avenue Southeast.

In the last couple of months, some council members have been hard-pressed to find a solution to the Mars Hill vacancy, as the city nets a loss of $30,000 annually to maintain it.

Earlier this month, Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama-Aramayo made the motion to either lease the building on a short-term basis, up to five years, and give the city more time to find the right candidate to fulfill the council’s original intent to bring higher education onto the plateau — and if that doesn’t pan out, to put the property back on the market.

“We didn’t spend the money just to have it taken off our hands,” Howard told the Reporter.

Valderrama-Aramayo’s motion failed 4-3 Tuesday, with Gerend and council members Kathy Huckabay, Bob Keller and Tom Odell dissenting.

The council then unanimously voted to give the city manager and his team — Gerend, Valderrama-Aramayo and Odell — time to pursue discussions with Central and, in the meantime, to keep exploring the other options in case Central is unable to move onto the plateau.

The council, as part of this motion, will hear an update on the progress made with Central in four months. After six months, the council has the option to reopen the discussion.

The city named only the one interested party at the Tuesday council meeting, Howard said, because the university gave the city the OK to do so. The other interested parties have not been revealed.

Central officials declined to comment for this story.