Construction on the building began and 2001 and it has housed the municipal government since Feb. 2004. Photo by Nathan Greenhalgh.

VILNIUS — The Vilnius municipal government is looking to sell it’s headquarters, a recently-built steel and glass high-rise in the financial district.

The city government says money from the sale is needed to ensure that public services, whose budgets have been strained by the economic crisis, continue uninterrupted. The initial price tag is 75 million litai (€21 million), 50 million litai of which the city would receive and the rest going to the bank holding the building’s mortgage.

“At the present moment the municipality is in a shortage of money to pay it’s bills,” Mindaugas Savickas, Vilnius City Municipality public relations chief officer, told Baltic Reports. “It is the way to save the public transport and city services.”

The only stipulations on the sale would be that the property continues to be rented out to the municipal government so it won’t need to find another base of operation. The purchaser does not need to be Lithuanian.

“There is no special condition, it could be Lithuanian or foreign. The main condition is price and the second is the possibility to rent. We do not look to see if it is a local or foreign investor,” Savickas said.

Since the city cut its public employees from 950 to 700, about 10 percent of the building’s office space is vacant. Construction on the building began and 2001 and it has housed the municipal government since Feb. 2004.