MARSHALL — The Marshall Area Fine Arts Council has been searching for a new home downtown. After Tuesday’s Marshall City Council meeting, it looks like that home will be in City Hall.

Council members voted to authorize the Marshall City Attorney and City Administrator to finalize a lease agreement for a vacant office space, and for the use of a common area, on the second floor of City Hall. MAFAC members said their plan would be to display works by area artists in the common area.

“The whole, what would be an exhibit area and an office, just seems to be begging for an arts presence,” said Carol Purrington, part-time volunteer coordinator for MAFAC.

Purrington said MAFAC’s current office, gallery and gift shop on Third Street was no longer affordable for the group, due to rent increases.

The total yearly lease amount for MAFAC at City Hall would be $4,332, said Marshall City Administrator Sharon Hanson. If the group wanted to also lease storage space, that would be an additional amount of $600 a year.

“We are not talking about a lot of square footage here,” Hanson said.

Purrington said MAFAC’s rent at their Third Street location had increased $300 per month. In addition, the group was looking at some programming changes that meant MAFAC needed less space for an office and gallery area. In the past few years MAFAC has also seen an increase in concert series events, and has needed fewer volunteers for programs.

“We have found that the gift shop is no longer sustainable for us,” Purrington said. “We hope that perhaps in the future we can revisit the viability of having a gift shop, but for now we are going to discontinue that.”

Purrington said MAFAC wanted to stay downtown, but there weren’t available spaces that were affordable and met the group’s needs.

“We have had conversations with MAFAC, and since December we’ve actually looked at the space several times in City Hall,” Hanson said. Hanson said in the past the city has had an agreement with another group to use City Hall office space. In that case, Southwest Adult Basic Education leased office space from the city.

“By continuing with exhibits, we are showcasing talented artists from Marshall and the surrounding area,” Purrington said. Having a presence at City Hall could also be beneficial for both the city and MAFAC, she said.

“That lightly used space on the second floor would become an asset. Gallery space brings some foot traffic into City Hall, making it feel more open, welcoming and alive,” she said.

Hanson said MAFAC and the city have had beneficial partnerships. Half of the current programming at the Marshall band shell was provided through ties with MAFAC, she said.

“The lease agreement that you have before you is modeled after the Adult Basic Education agreement,” Hanson told city council members. “We do have to finalize a few provisions in the lease agreement . . . one of those is a start date,” she said. The lease would run until the end of December, with the intent of evaluating how things went with MAFAC.

Hanson said the lease agreement did state terms like lease rates. “We did check with our city assessor on lease rates, and we feel that we are in the average for office space lease rate,” she said. “We’ve established a lease rate that’s less than the square footage cost for the office, and then we also included a provision that if there’s a need for some storage space, we put an amount in there.”

City Attorney Pam Whitmore said the lease would also address that the artwork displayed would be need to be identified as being from MAFAC, and not chosen by the city. “We always need to be mindful of art in public spaces and First Amendment concerns,” Whitmore said.

Under the proposed lease agreement, MAFAC’s yearly rent would break down to $12 per square foot of office space, and $5 per square foot for the shared common space. There would be a flat rate of $50 per month for storage.

Council members unanimously voted to have Hanson and Whitmore finalize a lease agreement with MAFAC.