Soon all that will remain of The Seattle Monorail Project will be a downtown conference room, four employees and a collection of properties around the city.

The monorail agency owes approximately $110 million to creditors and until the debt is paid Seattle car owners will continue to pay the car tab tax, officially the motor vehicle excise tax. The tax is also used to pay interest payments on the debt, plus operating expenses.

When the agency finally disbands is forecast at somewhere between October next year and as long as the summer of 2007.

During a meeting last week, staff presented a preliminary plan to board members for the more than 30 properties it owns, about 650,000 square feet of land purchased for $61.6 million.

In West Seattle, there are six parcels, totaling 51,122 square feet, purchased for $6,442,500.

Ross Macfarlane, monorail legal affairs director, outlined the plan as set out in state law.

He said any land sold for less than the best possible price "creates legal issues and, of course, creates an issue where we'd potentially have to collect the (car tab) tax for longer then we'd have to get if we were able to get fair market value."

Macfarlane said the elements of the property-selling plan include hiring a real estate consulting firm to help maximize the sales price, and that the staff hopes to have a recommendation in January for which firm to hire.

Specific property selling strategies the monorail staff is recommending include selling contiguous properties as a single block, in an effort to maximize land values.

Macfarlane also said staff will seek sealed bids between January and early March, and to have all sales completed and funds received by May. The board will have to approve the sale of each piece of property, but Macfarlane said that should amount to putting a yes or no vote before the board on the highest bidder for each property.

Macfarlane expects that sales to be executed quickly, in part because of the extensive amount of information the agency has acquired about each property, and partly because legal issues surrounding properties have largely been settled.

He said the property sales would be "...extremely well advertised so anyone in the region, or nationally, can find out about these properties."

The monorail staff is working with other agencies that could be potential suitors for the property and that staff had been in regular contact with the Seattle City Council, Mayor Greg Nickels' office, King County and the Washington State Department of Transportation, primarily to keep those agencies informed so there is "a legislative solution that could involve an agency taking all of the assets in order to allow them to be used for other transportation purposes."

Macfarlane said there had been only two government agencies expressing interest in buying property. The Washington State Department of Transportation and Sound Transit sent a letter of interest about purchasing a parking lot near King Street for rail expansion.

A four-person monorail staff will oversee selling the properties.

Of the 43 agency employees remaining in November, 39 were given notices of termination and half of those employees were terminated before November 30, including cessation of the contract for Interim Executive Director John Haley.

The remaining employees not staying on to oversee the sale of property will no longer be employed with the agency after Dec. 31, including Macfarlane.

The monorail offices in the Securities Building will also be vacated by the end of the year, with the exception of the downstairs conference room. More than 200 boxes of monorail documents are being sent to the Washington State Archivist for permanent collection, as is required by state law when a government agency is disbanded.

Steve Clark can be reached at wseditor@robinsonnews.com or 783.1244.