SNEAK PEEK AT NEW CITY HALL
Municipal offices to open next week
Windsor’s new city hall, which opens for business next Tuesday at noon, makes council chambers its focal point, accessed through an expansive public atrium at the building ’s front entrance. More than double the size of the current cramped chambers at the old city hall, the new chambers can expand even more for big crowds by opening the wall of glass doors and using the atrium as an overflow area.
It’s all about daylight and public access, according to project manager Wadah Al Yassiri, who eagerly led the media on a sneak-peek tour Tuesday of the $43.9-million project which was completed on time and on budget. The ample daylight is an architectural statement, said Al Yassiri, “that city hall is all about transparency.”
From the public’s point of view, city hall is all about council chambers, where their elected representatives make decisions and members of the public gather to watch or voice opinions.
“To have it front and centre, it only makes sense,” Al Yassiri said, pointing out the many features that make this building so different from the 1956 building that’s a warren of various departments, with the council chambers located in a windowless low-ceiling room on the third floor.
“Right from the get-go, it’s about the public and customer service,” said Al Yassiri, who has shepherded the project through 23 months of construction. “It’s not iconic,” he said, referring to the building ’s lack of opulence, “but it’s definitely a durable, efficient, very nice aesthetically new building, compared to the old city hall.”
The council chamber will hold an audience of about 180, compared to 80 in the old council chambers. Capacity can be doubled by opening up the doors to the atrium. The ceiling is about twice the height at 24 to 28 feet, and the front wall behind the mayor’s chair is clad in beige marble with the city coat of arms in the middle, “City of Windsor” above and the city’s motto “The River and the Land Sustain Us,” below.
The council chamber was designed with features that address the many deficiencies of the current room. For example, instead of having Cogeco camera operators squeezed into tight locations there will be robotic cameras located in the chambers, operated remotely from outside. It has many sound- dampening features to improve acoustics and wiring for computers to allow for a future with digital documents instead of paper. This building will feature a central reception area on the main floor where staff can “triage” people looking for city hall service. A bank of seven wickets directly behind will deal with the taxation and licensing inquiries that take up much of the city hall traffic. Upstairs on the second floor there’s a single location for planning, building, engineering and development inquiries.
It’s a new customer-friendly approach that gets rid of the traditional way of sending people to various departments to deal with different aspects of their development plan, explained Dan Lunardi, the city’s manager of inspections. “The idea is the customer comes to one location and we assist them with every stage of the development process.” Now comes the big move for 280 city hall staff. After staff leave for the day Friday, crews will commence a long weekend of toting filing cabinets, files and other items needed in the new building. Furniture is being completely replaced with $1.4 million in new furniture, except for Mayor Drew Dilkens’ furniture, which he wants to keep. Movers, IT staff and facility staff will be busy all weekend. “When the staff come in on Tuesday after the long weekend, everything is going to be ready for them,” said the move’s co-ordinator Stacey McGuire. But the new building will not open to the public until Tuesday at noon. “We have full confidence we will have few hiccups on the morning of,” she said, but hopefully any hiccups can be resolved by noon. An official grand opening with tours is planned for Saturday, May 26, as part of the city’s 126th birthday celebration starting at 10 a.m. at Ambassador Park on the riverfront.
The areas most used by the public will be on the first and second floors. The third and fourth are primarily a collection of cubicles, while the fifth floor contains the offices of the chief administrative officer, the city clerk and the mayor. Located in the northwest corner and with floor-to-ceiling windows Dilkens has a high-up view toward the river and the down town. While the entire project has a $43.9-million budget, the actual construction work by Oscar Construction cost a little more than $30 million. The square footage goes from 70,000 at the old city hall to 120,000, which includes 12,000 square feet of space for future expansion that will remain vacant for now.
A big cost still to come is demolition of the old city hall, including expensive asbestos removal, expected to start in September. Al Yassiri isn’t sure how much that will cost because you have to move everyone else before you can start punching holes in walls to determine the extent of asbestos abatement required, but he expects it will be in the millions. Once the old building is torn down, planning can begin for a new civic plaza that will stretch all the way to the river with green space. Al Yassiri is hoping he can finish the entire project, including demolition, under budget so he can roll any savings into the next phase, redevelopment of the civic plaza. “The building is nice, but that’s where I say our ‘Wow factor’ is,” he said, referring to the potential of creating a beautiful public space all the way to the river.
“I think it will bring everything together.”