Post Falls City Hall open house on June 6

POST FALLS – City workers are already moving into their new digs in the brand-new Post Falls City Hall at Fourth Avenue and Spokane Street.

Community Development employees moved in last week and the last of city workers will cart boxes and files over to their offices on Friday when City Hall will temporarily be closed.

The Post Falls City Council will host its first meeting in its new chambers on Tuesday and the public is invited to a June 6 ribbon-cutting and open house for the new City Hall.

The $7.2 million, two-story building is five times larger than its predecessor and will house nearly all city employees and offices, with the major exception of the Street Department.

Until now city workers have been split among several locations scattered across town.

“It’s been painful to tell somebody when they come to City Hall, ‘Oh, you have to go to Third Street or over to the Parks building,’ ” said City Administrator Eric Keck.

“Now we’ll all be together,” said Kelley Setters, an administrative specialist for the Planning Division of the Community Development Department.

The atmosphere is better, too, Setters said.

“I was in a closet,” she said of her workspace in the rented space her department has been headquartered in until now.

A public plaza and large indoor rotunda greet visitors to the new City Hall. Stained-glass windows depicting sister city Herborn, Germany, are being installed this week in the rotunda, and city officials hope to host art exhibits and concerts there.

A small second-story balcony overlooks the entrance.

Historical photos of Post Falls grace the shades of hallway light fixtures. Natural light permeates the building through a series of windows, cutouts between offices and skylights.

“Natural light was really a key to this building,” Keck said, adding that the lighting system automatically illuminates and dims the electric lighting depending on the ambient light at the time.

Mayor Clay Larkin’s former office was scarcely big enough to hold two people. Now he’ll have room to meet with several constituents at one time and have access to a nearby conference room for larger gatherings.

An attempt to preserve the old City Hall died when voters turned down the plan. Saving the 28-year-old building would have cost $1.2 million.

The building has been too small for some time. The roof leaked to the point that City Council chambers seating had to be removed in part and replaced with buckets to catch the drips.

The old building will be torn down and converted to a parking lot and stormwater collection area.

Post Falls residents’ opinions of the new City Hall are mixed. Some say it’s time for the growing city to have a larger City Hall, housing all its departments. Others say it’s a waste of taxpayer money.

“With new housing projects, new retail establishments and a growth which this city should be proud, it is time the city of Post Falls begin presenting the new image which represents this growth,” said Lonnie Capps. “The old City Hall was not representative of a growing and prospering city.”

Gayle White said she thinks the new City Hall will offer an attractive gateway to the city to welcome visitors.

Ann Hyatt said the building is beautiful but may be more than what Post Falls needs.

“We have so many other pressing needs in Post Falls,” Hyatt said, citing street projects and police staffing. “We would have been far better off focusing on these issues rather than spending so much money on an oversized city hall building.”

Dave Spiker also said the city wasted money on a City Hall it didn’t need. “Our public officials certainly are not shy about going overboard in picking unnecessary and very expensive interior and exterior materials for our local government buildings,” Spiker said.

Keck and Larkin pointed out that the city did not raise taxes to pay for the building.

And Keck said that while some people might see the money spent on City Hall as a waste, he sees it as an important part of building a city center for Post Falls.

“For what we’re trying to do to create some energy and a downtown, this building is a catalyst,” he said. “We’re building place.”

Larkin echoed that sentiment.

“Finally when someone asks me where downtown Post Falls is, I can point with pride to what we’ve created to carry Post Falls down the road.”