City hall won’t be moving soon.
On Jan. 21, the Cottonwood City Council instructed staff to look into the possibility of purchasing the 50,000-square- foot Rough Cut building at 635 N. Main St., just off of Riverfront Park, for a new city hall.
The council hoped that by buying the larger building, the city could not only consolidate city functions into just one location instead of the several different buildings that now contain the finance department, council chambers, the city manager’s office and other functions, but also sell the city buildings located on prime real estate in Old Town Cottonwood, which could then be used more effectively for commercial purposes.
However, at the meeting on Tuesday, April 6, the council backed off the Rough Cut purchase, largely due to cost, instructing staff to look into the costs of building a new consolidated city hall on property already owned by the city.
“I’m inclined to say we need a new city hall. I’m not inclined to say that we need to jump into something immediately,” Vice Mayor Doug Hulse said. “I’ve heard a lot of complaints about us building or using Rough Cut — that it will create a traffic problem in Old Town, that it’s not a good building for our purpose. We want 30,000 — this is 50,000 [square] feet. It’s almost double the size that we need.”
“I think there’s just too much risk on the Rough Cut building, and building on our own might be the way to go,” Councilwoman Jackie Nairn said.
Deputy City Manager Rudy Rodriguez presented information about the proposed purchase since the Jan. 21 meeting, including an assessment of $4.65 million for the property, with additional costs of several million to refurbish it for use as a city hall. Rodriguez also suggested the potential of using extra space in the building for use as an evidence storage facility for the police department, which would cost the city additional funds to develop independently.
Alternately, there was a discussion of using the remainder of the building for a charter school that would rent space from the city.
Some on the council expressed a desire to move forward with the purchase despite the high costs, saying that for what the council is getting it is a good price, and that it will likely cost more, along with increased interest rates for bonding, to build new, something that Richard Whitney, who recently purchased the building through escrow and would like to sell it to the town, argued at the meeting.
“I think that if we can get into this thing for $12 million or less we’re going to be good down the road,” Councilman Michael Mathews said. “I think if we kick this down the road or we try to build this on our own, I know what it’s going to cost. It’s going to be a lot more than that.”
However, other members of the council expressed
hesitation about the cost of the project. Councilwoman Tosca Henry expressed concern with the entire idea of going into debt to build a city hall.
“We don’t have the money for any of these options right now. I am against bonding for a new city hall at this time, and I am also against the Rough Cut building as the proposed city hall building,” Henry said, expressing a desire to save up money over the next few years rather than increase the city’s debt. “Some of our expenditures are within our control and this is an example of such an expenditure. We do have the option, and a new city hall is a choice that is well within our control.”
While Henry’s concern about the Rough Cut building was shared by several on the council, she ended up standing alone in her desire to put off paying for a city hall until later.
“I just feel like inac- tion is a disservice,” said Mayor Tim Elinski, who supported the Rough Cut option but embraced the compromise of going with the option for existing city property rather than purchasing a new building. “The time to strike is now,
in my opinion, because interest rates are so low, because the need is so great, because we are hogging up a lot of valuable real estate that could otherwise be in the hands of private busi- nesses and creating that more valuable downtown.”
According to Rodriguez, there is not currently a defined plan for which property the city will seek to build city hall on. The council unanimously voted in favor of staff coming back to council at a future meeting to determine next steps.
“We need to do some- thing. We need to get off the pot,” Mathews said. “We do, and we’re going to have to bond it. I wish we could save money and put away and pay for it, but it’s just not going to happen. We’re getting in the way over here. We need to move on and do something. We’re growing, and if we don’t move on this now, it’s going to cost the city of Cottonwood a heck of a lot of money later on—alotmorethanitis today, just like it was today a lot more than it was two years ago.”
