Four years after seizing the Ferdinand Building, officials inside Boston City Hall remain divided about what to do with the dilapidated Dudley Square landmark.

“We’re weighing our options,” Boston mayor Thomas Menino told Banker & Tradesman. “I’d love to say we’ll have a final decision in two weeks. But it’s difficult to say. Any time would be a guesstimate.”

The Menino administration took the Ferdinand Building by eminent domain in 2006, after the state reneged on a longstanding commitment to move the offices of the state Department of Public Health to the site.

Instead of waiting for a state agency, Menino said at the time, he’d move 1,200 municipal employees to Dudley, and replace the abandoned former furniture store with an $80 million, state-of-the-art municipal building. The project, he said, would help local businesses and spur redevelopment projects across Roxbury.

Construction crews demolished portions of the 33,000-square-foot building in 2008, to great fanfare. City officials also talked up a design competition they held at the site.

Then the project lost momentum. And then it appeared to stall out altogether.

At the beginning of this year, a neighborhood group overseeing Dudley Square’s revitalization was told by City Hall that construction at the site might remain frozen until 2016.

Squeeze Play

According to several sources close to City Hall, the Ferdinand project has gotten squeezed by several competing forces.

The Ferdinand redevelopment was conceived as part of a wider plan to remake city government, one that would have also seen City Hall moved to the South Boston waterfront. The South Boston move was to have been financed by the sale of City Hall, with the Ferdinand project being paid for with the sale of the municipal building at Court Square, adjacent to Government Center. The South Boston move was considered by many to be a long shot, even at the market’s peak; it’s now on hold indefinitely.

City Hall sources also contended the project has been de-prioritized amid a severe budget crunch. The mayor’s budget office has taken a hawkish view of new spending and borrowing, they said. And when push came to shove, Dudley Square’s new police station got funded, and the Ferdinand project got shelved.

That’s creating a divide inside City Hall between staffers on the neighborhood side who believe the project should go forward, and those on the financial side, who are arguing the city can’t afford it. So far, the financial side is winning.

“It’s been a priority for a long time,” Menino said. “We have to find a way to get the design and price to fit the budget. We’re trying to cost it out now. The cost has changed in a year.”

The mayor added that City Hall has yet to decide which departments would move into the new building, and “What value we can get for the space they’re in now.”

“The Mayor remains committed to building on the site of the Ferdinand in Dudley,” Menino spokeswoman Dot Joyce added. “The next step is design, but we must think of design in combination with financing the entire project, and those decisions are being made now.”

Joyce also said the administration had decided against “selling something at a time when we might not get the highest bang for our buck.”

To wit – the municipal building at Court Square, which was to be sold to cover the costs of the Ferdinand redevelopment, is currently assessed at $35 million.

Last year, its assessed value was $41 million.