Study shows City Hall needs more space

At 47 years, Brandon’s City Hall has well out-lived its useful life.

Monday night, David Doxtad, principal engineer, and Josh Muckernhirn, architect with ISG, a design and engineering firm with offices in Mankato, Minn., and Sioux Falls, essentially told the council that City Hall, its police department and public works facilities do not meet this growing city’s needs.

“I think it was an eye-opener for Bryan (Read) and us to go through not just City Hall, but the police department, too. You can see they have their hands tied behind their backs what they’re trying to get accomplished in what they have for a facility,” Muckernhirn said. “Public works is making due because they’re pretty good at pulling it together and making it work. But you can tell the efficiencies that would be created with having one facility.”

In their visual survey of City Hall, ISG reps noted a deteriorating exterior, small work spaces and limited office space/privacy, unsecured storage areas, ADA non-compliant restrooms and a lack of shared spaces (i.e. conference, meeting and training areas).

The police department, which was added onto the near five-decades-old City Hall, lacks sanitary and ample space for animal control, has limited space for storage, locker room, evidence processing/storage and space for vehicles.

And public works has three different facilities scattered throughout the city, which creates inefficiencies. Limited workspace and storage are also noticeable needs.

ISG provided a variety of one- and two-level concepts for City Hall, police and public works. City Hall concepts were designed for two parcels of land: the facility’s current location or land, which is presently owned by Celebration United Methodist Church, along Redwood Boulevard. Property eyed for a new public works site is north of the fire station where city lagoons once inhabited.

Just in the discussion phase, the concepts included space for the Chamber of Commerce and the Brandon Historical Society. Both were designed to be excluded or to be added on in future years.

“Tonight, we’re looking to hone in on a concept floor plan,” said Muckernhirn. “The one piece we need to finalize is the floor plan and then we can generate a high-level cost plan.” 

Mayor Paul Lundberg cautioned the council to not get caught up on the site location at this time.

“That’s always a huge thing with site selection with the public. We just need to proceed cautiously with that, and just make sure that what we develop has the ability to be put on multiple sites,” he said.

Lundberg said it’s now time to have a City Hall that can accommodate staff needs for a community on the grow.

“I really want to get to that point where the city has some facilities that we can say we’re proud of, that we can showcase them. We have a beautiful city here and sometimes we need forward thinking on these facilities,” he said. “They’re not easy sells, office spaces are not easy sells. Everybody thinks that I can office out of a dog house. We just have to do our salesmanship that when they come into see us, we have an image that we need to portray and we’re not at that right now in my opinion.”