At next week’s meeting the Gearhart City Council will be asked to decide whether to file for the mayor to go forward with a fire station.

The project, designed to bring the station out of the tsunami inundation zone, will require bringing the land into the city boundary.

The city could present a $13 million bond proposal in May. Gearhart would build the firehouse on land off Highlands Lane, currently out of city limits. To bring it into the urban growth boundary, the city would exchange an equal amount of acreage already within city limits.

The city has more than 70 acres west of the state’s no-build line that are inside the city’s urban growth boundary and zoned residential.

There are two areas available for the swap, consultant Scott Fregonese said, including about 50 acres of oceanfront land with setback rules prohibiting development. The idea would be to carve off a 34-acre piece to make up for the 34 acres in the north for the firehouse.

While state law has removed statewide restrictions within the tsunami inundation zone, Gearhart has chosen to keep stricter requirements and not allow critical facilities within the tsunami overlay zone. Land off Highlands Lane, at an elevation of about 65 feet, is outside that zone.

“We have to prioritize candidate sites for the UGB swap,” Fregonese said. “We can’t just look at one location, even though we’ve kind of got our eye on this one. We feel like it’s best.”

In September, the city made a contingent land transfer agreement with the property owner and developer, The Cottages at Gearhart LLC. As terms of the agreement, two lots part of the parcel — a 2.14-acre lot for the fire station and 2.4-acre lot for park property — would be transferred to the city.

The city has been working with the state Department of Land Conservation and Development to follow the correct process and achieve the state buy-in, Fregonese said.

The city will need to amend its comprehensive plan and zoning maps to swap the urban growth boundary and apply the single-family residential zone. In order to take effect, the decision to swap areas of the urban growth boundary and amend maps must be concurrent with the city and county. Public hearings will be required at both the city and county levels.

Starting February, the city will ask the state to review the material to allow the swap to occur, Fregonese said.

Timing is expected to be complete in April, before the proposed May firehouse bond vote. “It just depends on what they asked for if they want more information, or more clarification that can happen when you go back and forth with these types of reports and applications,” he said.

At the same time the city would have to rezone the county’s 34 acres to city residential zoning.

“And then hopefully by the summer there’s an annexation into the city,” Fregonese said. “After we have the UGB swap in place the city can then annex that four acres into the city, and then we could begin the development process.”

Typically a planning commission will have one or two meetings, recommend the comp plan amendments of the zoning change to the city council, he said.

“Then the City Council will have one or two to then adopt those comp plan amendments and zone change,” Fregonese said. “We’d like to work with the county closely to make sure that the timing lines up so we can support them too. I typically attend both the county and the city meetings.”

The process could continue through the end of winter into the spring.

“We will know before whether the state is going to say yay or nay on the swap,” Fregonese said. “So even if we’re in the process of doing the comp plan amendments in the zone change we will still know that we’re allowed to do the swap.”

If the 20-year bond is approved by voters, the firehouse could see a four- to six-month design process in 2022 with construction starting in 2023.

If the bond does not pass, City Administrator Chad Sweet said, the city may consider continuing on with the urban growth boundary exchange, allowing the city to acquire higher elevation land for other purposes.