The annex to Huntsville's city hall, located just a few feet south from the eight-story administration building, is expected to be demolished by the end of the year.

The Huntsville city council on Thursday approved a $698,773 contract with Gulf Services Contracting to remove the long-abandoned building that once housed, among other offices, the city's police department.

The demolition of the building has been in the works for some time and the council last September approved a contract to plan the deconstruction of the building, which descends from its presence next to city hall on Fountain Circle to Church Street.

Alas, the demolition of the building will not include a dramatic implosion.

"In a downtown setting, we're certainly not going to try to implode the building or anything like that," Ricky Wilkinson, interim General Services director for the city, told the council.

"Could we try?" a joking Mark Russell, the city council president, asked Wilkinson.

No, came the answer from Wilkinson.

"This will be a machine-type demolition," he said.

At a council meeting last year, City Administrator John Hamilton said the removal of the building is made more complicated because its built on a small bluff where it descends from Fountain Row next to the eight-story administration building to Church Street below.

The two buildings also have utility connections that must be severed.

Wilkinson said once arrangements are made to begin the demolition, the first half of the six month contract will be consumed by removing asbestos from the building. After that, the building will begin to be methodically removed.

The city council is also inching toward approving a new city hall to be built across Fountain Circle on the site of the current city hall parking deck. Hamilton reminded the council that removing the annex is a needed project and has nothing to do with building a new city hall.

"Demolishing the annex is not the beginning of replacing city hall," he said. "That should be thought of as a separate and distinct requirement, a separate and distinct project."

In September, the council was told that the city was under orders from the state to remove the unused elevators in the annex. Rather than removing the elevators and then tearing down the mothballed building, the council is opting to just removing the building altogether now.

As for what will happen at the site of the annex once the demolition is complete, Hamilton said that depends on what the council decides about building a new city hall. Assuming the council goes forward - as the body has indicated it currently favors - with building a new city hall across the street, the annex site could be teamed with the current city hall site for private development.

A public/private deal in discussions with two Huntsville developers to build what Mayor Tommy Battle described as an "iconic" downtown building - perhaps as tall as 16 stories - have quietly died. The possibility that those talks could be revived, of course, remains a possibility.

A master plan approved by the city council last year - which included the new city hall at the site of the parking deck - would allow the expansion of Big Spring Park onto the footprint of the current city hall while calling for a city skyline-dominating mixed-use building more to the south where the annex now stands.