The city is planning to lease nearly 800 square feet in the Mason Municipal Center to transportation and traffic engineering firm TEC Engineering.

The space, now known as the Mason Business Suites, occupies a space formerly dedicated to the city’s fire headquarters, said City Manager Eric Hansen.

“We have a couple of hundred square feet left there,” Hansen said. “We provide market rate lease that they pay to the city, then we discount that. If they help us and provide us some services, we’ll discount that to $8 a square foot instead of about $19 per square foot, the market rate.”

The lease is only available for companies that offer economic development potential for the city, he said.

Lease forgiveness is available for a company that is able to show the city that is has secured another facility for a minimum of a 2-year-lease in the city of Mason, Hansen said.

TEC, which maintains the city’s traffic signals, is expected to finalize a month-to-month lease in the coming week

Lease agreements of varying length are already in place with tech start-ups mDynamik and Storeflix, as well as tech investor CincyTech.

The mDynamik agreement allowed the company to begin start-up operations, while the StoreFlix agreement is an extension of its original lease, signed in November 2010.

“These are short term leases,” Hansen said. “They grow their company and they remain in Mason. In TEC’s case, if they continue in the office they have in Mason now and expand that with additional jobs, then they’re eligible for lease forgiveness.”

TEC Engineering, which started in 1992, opened a Mason office in 2005, said Ed Williams, the company’s vice president.

The lease deal allows the company to maintain an office in the city while it attempts to grow and establish a full-time office there, Williams said.

“(The lease) provides a great opportunity for small businesses such as ourselves to get established in the city and then transition into a more permanent location,” Williams said.

Three TEC employees will move from a Main Street office to the new space after the lease is signed.

TEC is aiming to add 15 employees and relocate the majority of staffers from its Springdale office into the city of Mason once several international contracts are finalized sometime this year, Williams said.

“TEC’s long term goal is to work within the city of Mason, especially given the other businesses and opportunities that are within the city,” he said.