Wednesday was an important day for downtown redevelopment.

By a previous agreement, the Stratford Group, a real estate development firm that owns most of the block immediately south of Auburn City Hall, was required to notify the City by 5 p.m. April 1 whether it intended to redevelop the block.

No such notification was received.

Now a key part of the purchase-and-sale agreement between the City and the group dating to last July that put most of the block into the developers’ hands kicks in, as the clock begins ticking on a 90-day period during which the city could decide to buy back the block from Stratford.

During those 90 days, Stratford will still be free, however, to submit plans. Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis.

Mayor Pete Lewis said the city will certainly consider it.

“That was part of the agreement with Stratford – build, or we take it back.”

Should the City exercise its option, Lewis said, it would “repackage” the block for another developer. Lewis said there has been no shortage of interested parties. Given that interest, he said, it’s not a question of whether that block is redeveloped, only when and by whom.

“We’ve had developers contact us every month,” Lewis said. “My last meeting with a developer was two days ago. There’s an old banking statement that goes, ‘10 come in, five come back, one goes forward.’ That’s the way I’ve always looked at it.”

The July purchase-and-sale agreement called for the City to transfer to Stratford the publicly-owned parking lots east and north of the Sunbreak Cafe. In exchange, Stratford transferred the north half of the block south of its block to the city. The City paid Stratford $507,595, the net difference between the purchase prices of the parcels.

The effect of this exchange was to consolidate the holdings of the city and Stratford on adjacent blocks, facilitating the development plans of each. Stratford’s plans call for razing the buildings that front on West Main Street and replacing them with a high-density residential, retail mix.

City officials are working with developer Spencer Alpert on plans for a five-block development called Auburn Junction. The block south of the Stratford block would be part of that.

Currently, Stratford holds three buildings on the Stratford block. The sole exception is the Sunbreak Cafe property. Owner Bruce Alverson is working with the Tacoma-based Gintz Group, which specializes in residential, commercial redevelopment and historic rehabilitation. He also could sell his business.

Even if Stratford did start construction in 2009, Lewis said, the City would not expect any building activity on the block to take place until the latter half of the year at the earliest because two full city blocks, the block immediately east of City Hall and the block north of City Hall, already are under construction.

“Physically, we would have no way to manage it,” Lewis said. “We’ve scheduled out at about 200,000 square feet a year of development for the next four or five years.”