huntsville city hall

The administration building at the Huntsville Municipal Complex is more than 50 years old. (AL.com file photo)

Nothing is imminent but the Huntsville city council last week took a first, small step toward the anticipated construction of a new city hall.

At Thursday's meeting, the city council approved a $36,500 contract with Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood architectural and engineering firm for preliminary design services.

Mayor Tommy Battle cautioned, however, that a new city hall won't be rising from the ground for years.

"When we start talking about a city hall today, we're talking six or seven years away from moving into the thing," Battle said. "We may be being very optimistic in that. We need to start now if we want to be in something new in seven to 10 years. That means this building has to last that long, too."

Huntsville's current administration building on Fountain Circle was completed in 1963. City officials are also spread among about a half-dozen buildings in the downtown area and an objective of a new city hall would be to bring those employees under one roof.

The initial planning will also help identify sites ideal for a new city hall. Battle said possible sites include the parking deck across Fountain Circle from the current city hall, the city annex next door to the current city hall or the parking lot on the north side of Huntsville Utilities off Clinton Avenue.

It's also possible that the new city hall could be built on the site of the current one. If not, Battle plans to add that land to adjacent Big Spring Park.

The initial work by architects is necessary for the city to identify needs in a new city hall, General Services Director Jeff Easter said.

"This is primarily a space-planning type contract," Easter told the council. "The information we hope to get form this would be items like square footage, other types of space allocation. The one thing about it is until we get this information from this contract, we will not be able to tell you anything about the cost of the new buildings, the size of the new building or where it could be located. We're going to use the information that comes from this contract to help determine these types of things.

"This is at the very beginning of a very long process."

In fact, Battle described it as "starting from scratch."

"We know how much space each of our departments use right now," Battle said. "If you walk through, you can tell we're not using it as efficient. To get it more efficient would cost more than the building would be worth. We want to start from scratch and make sure we have a very efficient plan for the use of our space and do this in the most cost-effective manner possible.

"This is just the starting phase. It's going to take six months to do this. After that six months, then we'll come back and everybody will look and each department will look at this and we will take it to the public. Then we'll have the model we can start working on."

And the overriding theme of this first step is that it's exactly that - a first step.

"This is really a standard way of handling a project of this complex," Easter said. "We're attacking the project from scratch trying to ensure that we don't forget anything or have all the options covered. We have no preconceived concept of the outcome. We're going to go through the process and take those results and continue on to the next stage, which would be schematics."