Council revisits City Hall dilemma

Remodeling bids for old bank range from $1.21 million to $1.36 million

The Daily Inter Lake

Right now, it's an empty shell of a downtown building.

It's pretty bare inside.

There's a cavernous first floor with a few small offices on the side and several more in the basement.

Most of those office walls likely face the wrecking hammer prior to a major inside facelift.

This is the old Wells Fargo building, earmarked as Kalispell's new main city hall. The building is supposed to house most city offices, with the current City Hall to hold solely the police and fire departments plus municipal court.

But now, the Wells Fargo building is the source of major sticker shock to the city.

The original estimate to overhaul the old bank building at 201 First Ave. E. was roughly $800,000.

But that rose to almost $1.3 million in mid-July, causing gnashing of teeth among City Council members and many business owners.

Unexpected problems surfaced as the preliminary estimate got fine-tuned.

Cost of construction materials increased. The heating system needed replacing. The basement office area is not accessible to handicapped people. More cubicles were needed than originally planned, which created a ripple effect - with extra expenses - on other renovation plans.

The council last discussed the issue in-depth during a July workshop meeting with no binding votes nor decisions made - other than telling City Manager Jim Patrick and the project's architect, Chad Grover of Whitefish, to present some options with cost figures accompanying each choice.

The issue is scheduled to come up again Monday.

That's when Grover is supposed to discuss remodeling bids - ranging from $1.21 million to $1.364 million - that were opened Thursday.

In 2005, the city bought the Wells Fargo building - appraised in 2003 to be worth $1.7 million - for $1.1 million. The original plan was to move most of the city government's offices this fall into the building, which has 19,662 square feet in its ground floor and basement.

Then the police and fire departments are supposed to expand inside the current City Hall to fill it up with little remodeling expected.

That means the purchase and remodeling costs appear to be in the neighborhood of $2.4 million, or roughly $120 per square foot. A Thursday city staff memo said construction of new offices in the downtown area ranges from $200 to $250 per square foot. The cost of land downtown one block from Main Street is $10.50 per square foot, the same memo said.

The staff recommends that the construction money be borrowed from cash reserves already in the city's coffers, which would be paid back over several years.

Mayor Pam Kennedy hopes that the move from the old City Hall to a new one - originally scheduled for this fall - will be complete in six months.

"What the public will see is the City Council taking its jobs earnestly and telling the staff to come back with something better," Kennedy said.

Several council members have appeared to lean toward making part or all of the move from the current City Hall to a totally or partly remodeled Wells Fargo building. The rationales are that delays will likely increase the remodeling cost of the Wells Fargo building, or that buying new site (if the Well Fargo building is abandoned) could be even more expensive.

However, that council support so far has appeared lukewarm and is contingent on what options are finally presented to it.

Meanwhile, the Kalispell Business Owners Association, a nonprofit organization whose primary purpose is to poll members on issues, recently unveiled survey results of more than 100 business owners - and 100 percent of those responding said the Wells Fargo project is a bad deal and the city should sell the building.

"This is the only time we've had 100 percent consensus on anything. … You don't pour good money after bad," said Don Garberg, the association's secretary. The group has 250 to 300 members.

The current city hall has 26,229 square is feet and holds roughly a third of the city's approximately 195 employees, including the police and fire departments, municipal court, several administrative offices and the City Council chamber, the same room used by the municipal court.

The city's planning, parks and economic development departments occupy leased offices scattered around the downtown. They cost roughly $68,000 annually, hold 23 people and occupy 5,991 square feet.

Meanwhile, the municipal courtroom is supposed to be overhauled. The court's administration is expected to absorb one or two additional city hall offices. Municipal Judge Heidi Ulbricht hopes to get the furniture and room remodeled so it would have an actual jury box, more wiring for computers and a metal detector.

Municipal court is not like district court with its bailiffs and pews full of attorneys, defendants and spectators. Routine nontrial court appearances frequently have only Ulbricht and the defendant in the court room - and an emergency call button her only protection. The court handles about 300 bench trials and one to two dozen jury trials annually.

A preliminary estimate of $125,000 was presented last summer to remodel City Hall - although council members believed that figure was soft and possibly underestimated.

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com