Oh, wow. That’s actually the best leverage the city has over this site, although landmark designation of the facade wouldn’t hurt.
310 W Martin is just a fire department office. It and Central Fire Station #1 are due to be vacated. Their replacement is going, as of Feb 2024, to be on a 2-acre site facing MLK, south of Memorial Auditorium. Missed opportunity to build a mixed-use fire station.
Yet the 2018 Civic Campus Master Plan only considered the existing city hall block, not the half-block they owned across Nash Square. It mentions 310 W Martin but only as one of the offices to be consolidated into East Civic Tower. It does not mention Fire #1. The little #3 blob here doesn’t highlight the city’s full footprint on that block, which includes Fire #1 to the northeast and the parking lot to the northwest. (Likely excluded are the townhouses at the southwest corner of the block.)
Though this is all in a world where the city holds the half-block. Highwoods (ugh) has assembled the northwest corner of the block, though they probably don’t have the fiscal capacity at this time to add to those holdings. Having just skimmed the campus master plan, its big selling point is that the city can break its existing leases, including Briggs Hardware (#5 above) and presumably move those uses into East Civic. Although the city also owns Exchange Place #6 above), and even though it’s not historic it does have a lot of street-level frontage across from the Y.