Third phase of City Hall project nears completion

The project is aiming for energy and environmental design award.

By Will Guldin

Published Dec. 11, 2009

On budget and on schedule, the new City Hall addition is almost ready for employees to move in.

The roughly $21 million project is in its third phase, and Assistant City Manager Tony St. Romaine said the project has gone well thus far.

"Really in terms of the actual construction we have not had any significant delays," St. Romaine said.

He said this success was due in part to bi-monthly meetings with all the parties involved in the project.

"These types of meetings are insuring nothing is falling through the cracks that needs to be done," he said. "We're on track."

Columbia Public Works spokeswoman Jill Stedem said once this stage is complete, renovations will begin on the older section of City Hall.

"Even though the new part is going to be complete in the next month, the old part still has to be renovated, and that could take a year or more," she said.

Most of the work left on the new section is cosmetic and moving in city offices will be a matter of logistics, Senior Architect Joe Frigerio said.

The new section of the building will incorporate many city offices and St. Romaine said when the entire project is complete, citizens will only have to go to one location to access most city services.

"For the city, it accomplishes something we've always wanted to achieve, which is create a downtown or central government complex," St. Romaine said. "A building where our departments work closely together and are able to communicate more effectively."

The overall design of the project is meant to bring the two sections of the building together.

"We wanted to blend the old building with the new building but not necessarily have a complete copy of the old building," Frigerio said. "So it was more a matter of having a little continuity between the two structures."

With the new addition, Frigerio, who has 37 years of experience in architecture, said green design is figuring into its construction. He said he hopes when the entire project is complete in the spring 2011, it wins a gold recognition under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard.

Gold is the second highest recognition a building design can receive from the U.S. Green Building Council, and Frigerio said this entails many design elements including improving insulation and using higher efficiency construction equipment.

"It's a little bit of everything," he said. "We do have solar panels on the roof, we will be heating the water used for hot water in the building by way of solar panels on the roof."

Sustainability was something important to both the construction team and the city.

"It's become important to all of us in the construction trade," Frigerio said. "We're trying to be good stewards of our environment after too many years having ignored that aspect of it, and the city has embraced that theology and are going full-bore to make sure that they're good stewards as well."

On Feb. 1, City Council is expected to hold its first meeting in the new council chambers and the move of offices to the new addition is expected to be complete in spring 2010, he said.