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Designers pick spot for Chandler City Hall
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The consultant hired to recommend a downtown site for a City Hall in Chandler has settled on a spot. RNL Designs plans to recommend later this month that a City Hall and council chambers be built on the northeast and southeast corners of Arizona Avenue and Chicago Street.
But the recommendation will likely draw fire from some on the City Council now and at least one candidate running for a seat in May.
“Government can be kind of full of themselves,” said council candidate Jeff Weninger. “They think they need a Taj Mahal right on Arizona Avenue.”
Weninger, a Chandler business owner, has been critical of what’s been dubbed the Chicago Street site in recent months because it would “take away prime real estate that could be generating tax dollars,” he said.
Councilman Lowell Huggins told a consultant representative in January that he favored a site adjacent to the city’s current offices, located in the Chandler Office Center that’s shared with Allied Interstate and Western International University.
But that site was all but eliminated by the consultant and a team of local stakeholders because of the lack of open space. The city currently has no specific City Hall. Since 1998, the city has leased office space. Most department heads, along with the city manager, council offices and city attorney’s office, are housed in the Chandler Office Center.
The lease costs about $700,000 per year — utilities included.
Representatives of the consulting firm and city staff were set to present the recommendations to the council Monday that came during a break in a 10-hour job review of City Manager Mark Pentz.
The briefing is expected to be rescheduled for the week of April 24, but no council vote has yet been scheduled, city spokesman Dave Bigos said.
Regardless of the location, the consultant said the new facility will need to be three to five stories tall and include at least 115,000 square feet of available space and enough parking for 450 to 500 vehicles.
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