The Amarillo City Council held its regular meeting Tuesday, opening with honoring former NFL player and Palo Duro graduate Evander “Ziggy” Hood with a key to the city. Hood, who played in the NFL for more than a decade, was inducted into the Panhandle Sports Hall of Fame on Sunday.
Jerry Danforth, the director of facilities and capital projects for Amarillo, gave a requested update on the new city hall project that is being built using the Amarillo Hardware Building. Approved by the city last year, the new city hall project was slated to cost $35 million.
The new city hall is expected to have twice the developed space of the current facility, with 120,000 square feet of space, of which 80,000 is planned to be developed. To stay at the proposed budget, changes have been made to the plan due to rising costs such as eliminating a proposed parking garage as well as a gym area.
Danforth stated to the council that at the new area, there will already be much more parking than is currently available on site so the garage is not seen as a priority for the building at this time. The new building will add a drive-thru capability to pay bills to the city, and all highly used departments will be on the first floor, including utility billing, human resources and risk management. There will be increased seating at the new council chamber, doubling the current capacity to 236.
Speaking about the cost-cutting measures, Danforth said that the city, to stay at the approved budget, went into the value engineering method to bring the costs in at budget. He said that with this process the city has been able to save $4 million in costs so far.
“Not much of the scope has changed; there are some additional things that we took out to stay at budget,” Danforth said. “We looked at what inflation has done to construction. The budget has not changed, so we could only reduce its scope to stay on budget. We will continue to look at ways to get the best value for this project. We will not exceed the budget allocated.”
Danforth said that inflation, which has risen about 14%, was a key factor in the changes that were made. He said that the way that the building will be constructed, the city could go back later and add a parking garage or more scope if approved by future councils.
During council, Danforth was asked if the building could utilize less of its space for city usage to save money. Danforth said that he would look at this with the departments and see if any changes could be made and if the change in cost would be significant. The building is expected to be ready in the fall of 2024.
“We looked at different construction materials, different designs and different ways to provide the same product at a better value,” Danforth said.