The Austin City Council approved advancements of the Austin Utilities building project Monday evening.

The council approved requests to alter the Austin Utilities Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement and a resolution to allow Austin Utilities to reimburse itself once the municipal energy company acquires $18 million in bonds for a new, $18.6 million project.

Austin Utilities is preparing to build a new $18.6 million central administrative facility at its Energy Park site near Todd Park in northeast Austin.

Since the project would house all of Austin Utilities operations and customer service functions, the energy company had looked to sell its downtown office space to the city, which occupies half of the Utilities building. Utilities staff won’t move out of the building until the new facility is complete.

The Austin City Council voted Jan. 5 to move forward an agreement to buy the Austin Utilities office, which the company shares with the city, for $275,000. The city will also give four acres of land near the city’s Cooke Farm development.

City officials will purchase all of the office space at 400 Fourth St. NE, as well as nearby parking by Riverside Arena and a backlot.

Utilities officials will work with TDKA and the Joseph Company to finalize construction plans and place them out for bid in early 2015. If all goes well, construction will start in 2015 and wrap up by late summer 2016.

The project will likely mean an average increase of $8.18 in utilities payments per month for residential customers and a 1 to 3 percent increase per month for commercial properties. Those rate adjustments took place in January 2015. Electric rates have increased 1.77 percent, gas rates increased 3.5 percent and water rates increased 6.9 percent since Jan. 1.

That increase is what prompted a change to the company’s PILOT agreement, which the Utilities uses to pay the city instead of taxes.

Austin Utilities does not plan to have a customer service office in downtown Austin after the facility is built, but utilities officials could have a payment dropbox stationed downtown. Though Austin Utilities has for years looked at options to improve its efficiencies — utilities officials bought 23 acres south of Todd Park in 2009 to potentially host a new building — General Manager Mark Nibaur previously said the time wasn’t right to move forward until utilities officials decommissioned the downtown power plant and looked at its options.

In other news:

—The Flood Wall Recognition Committee Establishment was discussed, and more details about how to choose people’s names for the plaques that will go on the flood wall were determined to be worked out at the next meeting. Council members discussed the possibility of including the public to choose the names for the flood wall plaques. The board was charged with creating criteria for the choosing process and bringing a name they felt deserved a place on the wall to the next meeting.

—Mayor Tom Steihm’s birthday is Feb. 3; he is 63.