Washington’s City Council, during its meeting Monday, will consider authoring the mayor to sign an agreement between the city and Mid-East Commission regarding the commission providing administrative services related to the proposed downtown hotel project.

Under terms of the agreement, the city would pay the commission $6,000 to perform those services. The city would be billed in $1,500 increments, according to a city document.

The hotel could be part of a downtown redevelopment project involving the former Belk and Hotel Louise buildings. Earlier this year, city staff began preparing contract documents concerning proposed options on the two downtown properties. The city intends to assign those options, after following required procedures, to a to-be-determined third party or third parties for development purposes. The city hired the University of North Carolina’s School of Government to assist it with this process.

The proposed aggregate cost for the options on the two properties is $23,000. The aggregate cost for acquisition of the two properties is $841,000. The city plans to use general-fund money to finance the cost of the options for the two properties.

During a meeting in June, the City Council received information about the project.

“For the last eight to 10 months, under the approval of council and guidance of (then-City Manager) Brian Alligood, we have been negotiating on behalf of the city option contracts for two key properties here in downtown Washington,” said Jordan Jones, a project manager with the School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative, to the City Council at that meeting. “The goal here is not for the city to acquire the properties but to acquire site control and option contracts so we can assign this purchase contract to a future developer that we will be identifying in our work as we start getting more involved in this process.”

Jones said then that during the next several months the DFI team would be working in downtown Washington to “think through potential uses of these sites.” Jones said that team is aware that the council has expressed an interest in a hotel for downtown Washington.

The council meets at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the Council Chambers in the Municipal Building, 102 E. Second St. To view the council’s agenda for a specific meeting, visit the city’s web­site at www.washingtonnc.gov, click “Government” then “City Council” heading, then click “Meeting Agendas” on the menu to the right. Then click on the date for the appropriate agenda.