East Wenatchee Commits to City Hall Renovation Schedule

The East Wenatchee City Council recently agreed to adopt a schedule of improvements for the eventual remodeling of City Hall.

The plan will come in five phases and will run through at least 2023.

According to East Wenatchee Public Works Department, in 2008 the City hired Forte Architects to complete a space needs assessment and a City Hall expansion study. The results of the space needs assessment indicated that City Hall's available space represented less than 50% of the needed space.

Community Development Director Lori Barnett said their department created the schedule from a list of improvements the City wanted to make. The improvements were then sorted by a specific chronological order to determine the schedule's five phases.

"They are all kind of contingent upon each other." Barnett explained, "(For example), in order for the police station accommodations to be improved, we actually have to finish the Public Works part because they are currently in the location where the potential new police station will be."

The five phases are as follows:

Phase 1 - Public Works: The Public Works Department will be moved to the north portion of the city hall campus. A design consultant will be hired this year, with bidding in the spring of 2020. Construction will begin in 2020 and hopefully completed by 2021.

Phase 2 - Police Station: As previously mentioned, the new police station will occupy the space formerly used by Public Works. The design process for Phase 2 will begin in the spring of 2020 and run through the rest of the year. Bidding would occur around the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021.

Phase 3 - Court/Administration: The plan is for the court to expand into the old police station and potentially some administrative offices. Along with Phase 2, Phase 3's design process is set to begin in the spring of 2020. However, bidding isn't anticipated until the end of 2021. Construction would begin in early 2022, but will be dependent on the progress of Phase 2 and the movement of the police station.

Phase 4 - Library: A house on property owned by the city adjacent to City Hall will be demolished, as well the current annex building. A new library and meeting space would then be constructed in their place. Design will begin in 2021, with construction ending in 2023.

Phase 5 - Remodeling Former Library Space: Design for this phase will begin in the spring of 2020 along with Phase 3. Once the new library has opened, the space formerly used by the library will become administrative office space and conference rooms. Construction is expected to start sometime in 2023.

Public Works opted to 'front load' the design process for all phases in an effort to anticipate cost. Current bonds will likely take the city through at least Phase 1 and 2.

"It all comes down to the design. That's why we want to start front-loading the design a little bit so that we have a better idea of how much it would cost." added Barnett, "Obviously, at some point, we probably will have to go out with another bond measure or we may be able to come up with some funding from other sources that we'll be able to plug in to some of these facilities."

Phases 4 and 5, or projects surrounding the library, will almost certainly require additional funding. So much so, in fact, that the improvements schedule includes fundraising to start in 2020 despite the bidding process for Phase 4 not starting until at least late 2022.