The Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center is a lonely site these days.

Mothballed by the city of Oakland, the historic venue's fate continues to remain murky six years after the city first closed its doors.

Now in a bid to gain revenue, Oakland will sell the center to its own redevelopment agency for $28.3 million. But after the sale, it's unclear if the Kaiser Convention Center will reopen any time soon.

Tonight, the Oakland City Council will vote on selling the center to the Oakland Redevelopment Agency division in a move to raise money for the city's troubled general fund. This upcoming fiscal year Oakland will have a deficit of $58 million and is looking at additional financial problems going forward.

The center was appraised last year at $29 million, but it has $5 million to $9 million worth of upgrades needed, including seismic work.

"At this point it has not been determined what we will do with it," said CEDA Deputy Director Gregory Hunter. "The redevelopment agency doesn't have the funds to rehabilitate or operate the center."

Hunter said the redevelopment agency will likely hire a specialized real estate firm to do a full assessment of the center.

"They'll likely look at what it will take to rehabilitate the site and what it can potentially be used for," Hunter said. "It's a very special purchase and we want to make sure we know all of the options."

Hunter said as part of the assessment, the redevelopment agency also will likely identify brokers who would be able to handle the sale of an historic municipal venue.

"Once we reach out to those in the brokerage community we would ask them to submit proposals for us to look at," he said.

Those next steps, however, do not have a timeline and it's likely the site will remain dormant for the foreseeable future.

Built in 1914 the center, once known as the Oakland Auditorium includes a large theater, a large ballroom and arena space. Once the site of an Oakland roller derby team, rock concerts and community events, it has been closed since 2005.

According to a staff report from the city of Oakland, the center, "is not code compliant, suffers from serious deterioration, and requires significant upgrades and replacements of its major systems and other improvements to return the facility to productive use. The facility is an underutilized, substandard and inadequate public improvement and constitutes blight within the meaning of redevelopment law."

Recent reuse and sales deals have fallen through for one reason or another. Last year, Peralta Colleges seriously considered purchasing the historic venue, but couldn't come to a financial agreement with Oakland.