Council Rethinks City Hall Plan Planning For Possible Expansion Takes Precedence Over Renovation

The city of Coeur d’Alene is spending money originally budgeted for City Hall renovation to plan for an expansion that could cost $1 million or more.

Officials say the 20-year-old City Hall on Mullan Avenue quickly is running out of room and needs new plumbing, conference rooms, reconfigured offices and fiber-optic wiring so departments can communicate better.

Last October, the City Council budgeted $100,000 for renovations and $90,000 for computer equipment that would allow the staff to provide better customer service.

Then on Jan. 12, the council agreed at a retreat that a goal for this year will be to start long-range planning for a possible expansion of City Hall.

Six days later, the council approved a request for architects to develop plans for a two-story addition to City Hall along with renovations to the basement, fiber-optic wiring and some plumbing and mechanical improvements.

“After we allocated the money (last year), we realized it was way under what we wanted to do,” said Dan Yake, the city’s growth services director.

So the council agreed to allow Yake to use about $25,000 of the original $190,000 to hire a consultant to give the city a range of ideas that could improve service and meet customer needs for another 20 years.

“If it takes more than ($25,000), then I will have to go back to the council and ask for a reallocation of the $190,000,” Yake said.

Rather than just add a few computers, fiber-optic lines and new carpeting, Yake said, it makes sense to come up with a plan the city could split into phases that could be built and paid for over several years.

Otherwise, changes made to the City Hall would be wasted if and when the council votes to expand the building, Yake said.

“I think that was the concern of the council - they really don’t want to waste money,” he said.

But the improvements won’t come cheap.

“When we looked at the costs of what we wanted to do, the numbers just kept climbing,” he said. “We could easily top $1 million. But $100,000 wasn’t going to give us the product that the citizens would have expected for a service center.”

City Clerk Susan Weathers stressed that the expansion of City Hall is just a goal.

“How we are going to fund it has not even been brought up to council,” she said. “This is still in the embryonic stages.”

Mayor Steve Judy agreed that the expansion is simply one of many goals, such as consolidating services at the permit center, to make City Hall more customer friendly.

“I don’t think we have any idea what (the expansion) will be,” Judy said. “I think what you have is a request for proposals to see how that could happen.”

Yake said he expects half a dozen architects to submit proposals, which are due Feb. 25.

The city would then decide which architect is most qualified and hire that person as a consultant, Yake said.

“Nothing is set in stone,” he said. “Once we come up with a design, we will need to seek council approval.”