City Council returning to improved chambers

Dan Kulin

Monday, Nov. 1, 2004 | 9:19 a.m.

Ten months after setting up temporary shop in the nearby city convention center, the Henderson City Council is moving back into its new and improved Council Chambers in City Hall next week.

The return of council meetings to City Hall marks the end of the city's $72.3 million expansion and renovation of it's downtown complex.

The largest piece of the project is the five-story, 220,000-square-foot addition that is more than twice the size of the old building connected to it. The addition opened in December and the old City Hall closed soon thereafter for renovations.

Employees moved back into the renovated building this month, with different departments moving each weekend.

The City Council meetings, which have been at the Henderson Convention Center since January, will return to the renovated City Hall on Tuesday.

The public will see a Council Chambers that looks very much like the old one, although it now has 224 seats in the chamber, an increase of 44 seats, and a foyer area for the media and standing room that is separated by large windows from the rest of the chamber. Those attending council meetings will also have to pass through a metal detector to get in.

Mayor Jim Gibson said he thinks the expanded and renovated City Hall will be easier for the public to navigate through -- more "user friendly," he said.

Although there has not been a security situation that prompted the city to begin using a metal detector, Gibson said "The environment in today's world is just different. ... So we're taking every precaution for the safety of the council and the citizens attending."

The City Hall expansion gave the city the office space it needed to move staff from temporary offices in modular buildings into City Hall. Over the years, four city divisions moved into the temporary buildings.

Meanwhile, in departments that stayed in City Hall, conference and storage rooms were shrunk to make room for cubicles. And the building that was designed to provide space for 193 employees, eventually held about 300.

Today, about 725 Henderson employees work out of the City Hall buildings, and there is vacant office space available for about 125 more, city Construction Manager Mark Hobaica said.

If the growth of the city creates the need for even more in the future, Hobaica said the city could, as it did before, convert or shrink conference and meeting rooms to make space for cubicles and offices.

The end of this project also means a temporary end to the construction that had been going on around City hall for almost three years.

Some piles of dirt and a fence between City Hall and the convention center will remain until the next construction project, a plaza, gets underway.

Construction of the plaza will begin in July, Hobaica said. The plaza will be paid for with an $8 million grant from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority plus $3 million from the city.

The plaza, expected to be completed in April 2006, will stretch from Lead Street to Water Street and be a long, wide and open plaza with trees and benches.