By Kathy Feist
Staff from Grandview City Hall and Police Department are gleefully returning back to City Hall after being scattered around town during building renovations. It’s been at least 10 months since most last set foot inside the doors. All are expected to be moved in by Christmas.
“It feels good,” said one City staff person as she unloaded files from boxes.
“We’re excited,” said City Administrator Cemal Gungor, who was only too happy to give the Telegraph a preliminary tour of the newly remodeled space.
The Tour
Since it was built 50 years ago, Grandview’s City Hall has shared space with the Department of Motor Vehicles in the octagon-shaped municipal building located at 1200 Main St. Thanks to a $21 million bond package overwhelmingly passed by Grandview voters in 2022, the DMV moved into an adjacent $700,000 renovated building in February. At the same time City Hall began its $5.3 million renovation.
Visitors will see very little change to the exterior of the building. It’s when they enter City Hall that they see big changes.
Gone is the open and airy 1970s “sunken living room” feel that made up the core of the building. The two steps leading down to the community room and Board of Alderman chambers were no longer ADA compliant in today’s world.
Gone too is the wide open space, which provided little privacy. “At a 7 pm Board of Alderman meeting, if someone flushed the toilet in the bathroom, everyone could hear it,” Gungor said.
Step inside the new City Hall–past the two new sets of automatic sliding doors–and one’s eyes immediately go to the center of the octagon. It’s a pleasing sight.
The large Board of Alderman Chambers still takes up the center core. (“You can’t change an octagon,” says Gungor.) But now it sits behind glass walls, and on the west end, opaque walls, and here and there, partial walls.
The room’s gray carpeted floor is now level with the rest of the building. No more sunken living room.
The color scheme in the chambers is primarily gray with black trim and white ceiling. But thanks to skylights surrounding the perimeter of the Chambers, the room has a light and airy, almost ethereal, feel.
A stained wood suspended ceiling matches the wood panel on the chamber’s granite dais. Gray plastic chairs are set for visitors in the middle of the room with four large wall-mounted televisions in each corner.
Once you’ve taken that in, the next most obvious change is the existence of hallways, which were non-existent in its previous open-air design.
The gray color scheme continues throughout the building, but with the Kelly green accent color most often associated with Grandview’s logo. Light-oak colored vinyl wood flooring replaces the thin carpet. And the exposed ceiling is painted white, bringing in light and hence, cutting down on utility bills, according to Gungor. (This is especially true in the chambers.)
Large signage at the top of the walls makes it easy for visitors to find various departments, such as Finance, Administration, Municipal Court and Information. ADA codes have played a significant role in the remodel.
Customer counters have been lowered for wheelchair visitors. The seating is now provided for everybody.
A lift assists those with physical disabilities to travel up the few steps leading to the Administration offices.
A stairway entrance on the northwest end of the building, near the police department, has been removed. Serving as a second entrance and exit, the stairway was not ADA compliant. It has now been replaced by a large picture window overlooking a new townhouse development across the street. The removal of the stairway provides much needed natural light to the police department, according to Gungor.
A new emergency exit has been constructed on the southwest end, leading out to the DMV parking lot.
It won’t take long for visitors to see that the DMV portion of the building has disappeared. The west end of the building, where many sat and waited to register vehicles or get driver’s licenses, is now utilized by the Municipal Court division.
Below the Municipal Court is Grandview’s Police Department, which has also been remodeled and updated with new technology, thanks in part to a grant from Jackson County E911 tax.
The design and remodel of Grandview’s City Hall is credited to Hoefer Welker Architects and J.E. Dunn Construction.
“I’m proud of what we have here,” says Gungor. “We are giving a second life to this 50-year-old building for at least another 30 years.”