ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – The Civic Plaza Hotel in Downtown Abilene now has a new owner.

The City of Abilene and Abilene Improvement Corporation are teaming up to purchase the hotel with a $2.5 million price tag.

The goal is to repurpose the hotel for a development site in the next 6-8 months.

“We don’t have a plan at this point. We will raise the building, try to get it to a point where we hope that it is interesting for somebody to come in and do what they want with it. Obviously we will have some sense of what they will do with it before we sell it,” says Abilene Improvement Corporation Board Member Mitch Barnett.

Current tenants of the hotel will need to be out by December, which means the Abilene Housing Authority (AHA) could be getting extra residents searching for affordable housing.

“The only way that we can assist you, because we don’t do emergency housing, is if some of those individuals at the Plaza have housing choice vouchers, we will simply give them another voucher to go look for another unit in the community of their choice,” says AHA CEO Gene Reed.

To make that change, residents can visit the AHA office off of East North 11th.