Lawrence city commissioners are willing to spend $25,000 as they wait to see whether plans to purchase the Santa Fe Depot in East Lawrence materialize.

Commissioners at their Tuesday evening meeting unanimously agreed to accept an $87,563 federal grant to fund architectural work related to restoring the 1950s-era depot at Seventh and New Jersey streets. The grant, though, requires a $25,000 match from the city.

The city, however, doesn’t own the building and has said it won’t take over ownership of the depot unless it can find grant money to do about $600,000 worth of needed repairs and code improvements to the building. But commissioners on Tuesday said they didn’t want to turn down the federal grant because it would pay for all the architectural work left to be done on the project.

The architectural work still will be valid whenever the city decides to move ahead with purchasing and restoring the building, commissioners were told.