• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Edgerton City Hall offers luxury and energy efficiency

Photo

Photo by Bill Olmsted

Edgerton's new City Hall should be open for business by Friday.

Photo

Photo by Bill Olmsted

Edgerton City Administrator Ramona Flanigan, far right, shows off the office area of the new City Hall to members of the Edgerton Rotary Club during a tour of the building on Tuesday.

Photo

Ramona Flanigan

EDGERTON — "It smells like a new car."

Those were the first words out of Edgerton Rotary club member Steve Thompson's mouth as he walked through the front doors of the new City Hall during a special open house Tuesday afternoon.

Thompson and a few dozen other club members were among the first in the city to get a tour of the new building.

As a "new car," you'd have to classify the 5,100-square-foot, $1.2 million facility on Albion Street as a "luxury-hybrid."

Options include rooftop solar collection panels with a monitoring system, a three-pump, 11-well geothermal heating system instead of a gas-fired furnace, and council chambers wired to stream video of city meetings to the Internet and to public access television.

And how about ceiling tiles, carpeting and furniture made from recycled materials? Or a lighting system that can adjust itself based on the amount of sunlight coming in through the building's large, high-efficiency windows?

The new building gives big play to energy efficiency, a design feature fed by $140,000 in donations and grants. But the building was designed for flexibility and staff efficiency, too.

During the tour, City Administrator Ramona Flanigan showed how all of the city's administrative offices are clustered around a large atrium with huge tables where city plans can be laid out for review by city staff.

Out front of the administrative offices is a spacious brick and tile foyer that Flanigan says will double as an overflow voting area during elections.

The foyer, which faces the building's business counter, streams with sunlight from large windows that offer a panoramic view of Fulton Street and one of the city's restored tobacco warehouses.

"This looks great," Rotary member Jim Raymond marveled during the tour. "The old city hall left the wrong image. It left the old archaic, small-town image. We've needed this for a long time."

A narrowly passed referendum in June 2009 brought plans for the new city hall to fruition.

Since then, the building project has faced challenges, such as a problem with Alliant power lines, which bisect the southeast corner of the lot.

Moving the lines would have cost at least $70,000, a factor that led the city to redesign the front of the new City Hall so it would run diagonal to the power lines. Ultimately, that cut into the size of the building's council chambers.

Flanigan has a bright view of the change.

"It was a blessing in disguise," she said, explaining the change added to aesthetics, giving City Hall a fuller lawn area and offering a more broadside view of the building's façade.

Plus, Flanigan said, it allows the city to devote more space to other parts of the building, like a large conference room with a kitchen, both of which will be available for use by local civic groups.

Flanigan said she's most proud that the building was designed with flexibility and community needs in mind.

"My main hope is that the citizens of this city are proud of the building," she said.

Other features and plans at the new City Hall include:

-- The former City Hall and an auxiliary city garage next door will be torn down. In their place, the city plans a new 40-car parking lot.

-- An after-hours utility payment box on the sidewalk in front of the building.

-- A driver's side postal box on the north side of the building.

-- The building will serve as the permanent location for municipal court.

Construction crews on Tuesday continued finishing work at the new City Hall, but Flanigan said the building is still slated to open to the public Friday.

It has to. The city is scheduled to shut down its old City Hall building Thursday.

"The rest of us could still be running around with boxes, but it will be open for business. That's the goal, anyway," Flanigan said.