EUGENE, Ore. (KMTR) – A next step finally taken by Eugene City Council Wednesday with councilors passing a plan to extensively rebuild Eugene City Hall.
With an eight to zero vote, councilors passed the so-called “rebuild and renew” option for Eugene City Hall at a work session on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2012 .
The plan guarantees that at least some of the elements of the current facility will be retained in the future building, including the current council chamber, all of the public art and as much of the current under-building parking as possible.
But there is still some room for big changes to the facility. The “rebuild/renew” option calls for contractors to analyze and assess the current building on site. With the data, city staff will see if those buildings can be remodeled to fit the needs of the future city hall.
If those buildings do not fit, they will be demolished. Analysis should be complete in the next six months to one year.
“The initial design phase and analysis will tell us a lot and we'll come back to council to get an approved design direction and then we'll be off and running and we'll kind of finish it,” says Mike Penwell, Facilities Design Manager for the city of Eugene.
The city hall site analysis will cost up to 75,000 dollars and be completed by a private contractor. That money will come out of the current 15 million dollars that has been set aside for the project. As for who will do the work, the city says like other projects, it plans to hire all local contractors to design and build city hall. Final design will likely take 12 to 15 months. Construction should take another 15 to 18 months.
The earliest that the city is estimating it will be able to move in to the next iteration of city hall is summer of 2015.
