Wanting to consolidate scattered government offices, the city of Napa will explore the feasibility of buying the new $25 million Napa Square complex, located across School Street from City Hall.

Meeting Tuesday, the Napa City Council authorized staff to begin exploratory talks with CDI Development and Realty Co., developers of the 68,000-square-foot Napa Square, which opened last summer.

“There will have to be a lot more information before there is a deal,” Mayor Jill Techel said Thursday afternoon.

The owners of Napa Square are interested in negotiating with the city, Techel said. “There are multiple options on the table,” including leasing space for city offices, she said.

Harry Price, a principal with CDI, declined to comment this week on talks with the city.

Napa Square opened this summer with five financial service companies as tenants. Two restaurants will open this winter. Some 20,000 square feet of office space on three floors sits empty.

The city has been looking for ways to consolidate administrative offices for nearly a decade. Departments are located in seven downtown buildings, including four leased spaces for which the city pays nearly $200,000 annually in rent.

Former City Manager Pat Thompson began accumulating funds for a new City Hall, but these reserves were spent on day-to-day operations when city finances became stressed.

The city remains financially fragile, relying on reserves to balance its budget, City Manager Mike Parness said. But sometimes good deals can be had in a bad economy, he said.

Parness is leading a far-reaching effort to assess the city’s need for office space and opportunities for bringing departments under fewer roofs.

“We’re actively looking at various properties and putting values on our own,” Parness said. “With a down economy, you have different types of opportunities.”

“The trick here is to know what you need and having options so if something came up, we could move faster,” Parness said.

In April, 2008, the City Council hired Racestudio of Berkeley to do a $63,225 study of how city offices could be brought together. The consultant recommended in March that Napa seek small consolidations, deferring the dream of a single building until better times.

The present arrangement is far from ideal, with residents having to go to a half dozen buildings — some as many as eight blocks from each other — to conduct city business, officials said.

The goal is “one-stop shopping,” but that can only be achieved when the city can pay for it, Techel said. “We’re always looking at cost,” she said.

The city’s Parks and Recreation Services Department on West Street will have to move within a few years, as the flood control project will wipe out adjacent parking, Cassandra Walker, the city’s community development director, said.

The city’s water, personnel, economic development and information technology functions are located in rented space downtown, Walker said.

Other departments in City Hall and in the Community Services Building on First Street have inadequate space and could benefit from expansion now, she said.

Racestudio analyzed the value of current city real estate holdings in and about downtown, including parking lots and structures. The city might be able to finance office consolidations by selling off real estate made surplus by new offices, the report said.

Under two likely scenarios, the city someday would build a new City Hall at the current location or on the Community Services Building block. Development of either site would make the other site available for sale to a private developer.

The developers of Napa Square have been talking off and on with the city for nearly a decade about the possibilities of a public-private development embracing both sides of School Street.

When the city decided it could not move forward on a new City Hall, CDI proceeded with the current project that runs along First Street from School to Franklin Street.

The city has been methodically looking at its options for bringing offices together, Parness said. “We’re looking at the alternatives one at a time,” he said.

The Racestudio report analyzed the feasibility of the three-story Robert Louis Stevenson office building, at 1700 Second St., opposite the downtown fire station, for city offices.

The report raised a host of financial and functional concerns that would make it appear the building is unsuitable as a new City Hall, even on an interim basis.