Committee recommends building new city hall in Hastings

HASTINGS, Neb. - The committee in charge of reviewing options for the future of the Hastings City Hall has made its recommendation to the city council.

New city hall building architectural drawings

The committee recommends demolishing the existing city hall building and constructing a new one in its place. The recommendation follows a series of town hall meetings and an online survey in which locals were able to give their input.

The committee used the survey results to gauge the priorities of the community, then assigned grades to each project option for each of the priorities. The new build scored 91 out of 100, a complete renovation scored 88, relocating to the utilities building scored 83 and repairing the existing building scored just 60 out of 100.

The estimated costs are $8.85 million for the new build and $8.46 million for the renovation. Moving to the utilities building was the most expensive at more than $10 million and only making repairs would cost around $2 million.

City employees are currently working out of different buildings because of high levels of mold in city hall.

The City Council will discuss the committee's recommendation at its work session on Monday. It will vote on the issue at a future meeting.