Ammon City Hall expanding and remodeling its building to better serve the community
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AMMON — Ammon City Hall is undergoing a remodel and expansion to accommodate the community for the next 30 years.
City Hall is located at 2135 South Ammon Road. Part of the building has a fence around it, with crews working on the property.
“The design is modest from Ammon Road. If you’re not paying attention, you may not even know there’s an expansion going on,” said City Administrator Micah Austin.
The “old City Hall” is about 5,000 square feet, and the expansion will roughly double the size of the building overall.
The current population of Ammon is around 20,000 people.
“We knew as the city grew, that we’d need more space,” Mayor Sean Coletti said. “For many years, the city council has saved money because we knew that the old city building was going to be inadequate at some point.”
Coletti said the city has budgeted $3 million for the expansion and remodel and is paying for it using savings that were set aside.
“No additional tax cost to the residents whatsoever,” Coletti said.
The old City Hall was built in 1995, and was quite small. Over the years it became clear it was time to expand.
“People were working on top of each other and stepping over workplaces and walking through workplaces to get to other workplaces. It was time,” Austin said.
There was never an elevator to get to the downstairs and there weren’t enough meeting spaces. Only two meetings could be held at a time.
“If we had to have three or four different meetings at the same time, we couldn’t do it,” Coletti said.
Additionally, the mayor didn’t have an office to hold a meeting and would try to find any available space, like the break room.
Construction on the expansion began in September. It will have additional office space, including an office for the mayor, an ADA-compliant elevator and additional parking spaces.
There were only 40 parking spaces before, and now there will be 76. Due to the limited number of available spots, people would often park next door at a church and walk over.
There will be another way to access the city building, which is through Brookfield Drive, instead of just Ammon Road.
“Then we also have a green space out here that we will beautify and make sure that it’s a spot that the public can be proud of and utilize,” Coletti said.
The old part of City Hall will still be used. It is going through a remodel. The offices in the front are being redone and so will the downstairs.
The city council chambers will not go through a remodel for a few reasons.
“The cost would be exorbitant to expand the council chambers. And…the vast majority of our meetings, the people who are in attendance can easily fit in the current council chambers if we have to. We also have zoom capability,” Coletti said. “Just didn’t make any sense to build a massive new council chambers with those options.”
Austin and Coletti hope everything will be finished by the end of July. However, it could be fully finished by the end of September.
“I’m excited for how it will serve the public in the future,” Coletti said.
