FORT LAUDERDALE — The fate of the old gray bunker of a City Hall in downtown Fort Lauderdale was sealed on April 12, when a record-breaking rainstorm flooded the basement.
The 1960s-era building lost power, forcing City Hall employees to work from home or in rented space.
To keep the lights on and the AC running, fuel-guzzling generators were brought in to help preserve the building’s contents while insurance adjusters and FEMA officials assessed the damage.
Taxpayers are paying the sky-high cost to keep the building operating: $1 million a month, or around $35,000 a day.
This week, commissioners made it clear they want to cut their losses and demolish the building so a new City Hall can be built.
Just fixing all the damage in the basement will cost more than $9 million, commissioners learned Tuesday while sitting on stage at The Parker playhouse, where meetings have been held since the deluge closed City Hall.
To bring the entire eight-story building up to code will cost millions more, City Manager Greg Chavarria says.
Mayor Dean Trantalis and all four commissioners had the same response after hearing the news: Time to knock her down.
“That’s $1 million a month (to keep City Hall running),” Trantalis said. “That’s a waste of money. It’s time to move on. We need to demolish that building.”
Knocking down the building will cost around $700,000, Chavarria says. Hauling away all the debris will cost another $2.5 million.
“We will look to unplug by August 31,” Chavarria told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It’s costing us $35,000 a day to keep the building running. We’re still moving things out. We had to get a crane and take a huge printer system out of the second floor.”
John McCall/South Florida Sun Sentinel
The Planning and Zoning Board meets at City Hall on April 19, one week after a storm dumped 26 inches of rain on Fort Lauderdale. It will likely be the last public meeting ever held in commission chambers.
An official commission vote approving the demolition will come later, Chavarria said.
After the building is demolished, Fort Lauderdale can either build a new City Hall in the same spot or sell the land for an estimated $27 million and look for another site for City Hall.
Commissioners have the final say on which way they want to go.
But first, city leaders want to hear from residents on just what they need in their new City Hall.
‘The people’s City Hall’
On Tuesday morning, commissioners asked the city’s Infrastructure Task Force to hold a series of workshops seeking public input. It was unclear when those meetings might begin, but they are expected to be held over a period of five months.
“It’s clear we need a new City Hall,” the mayor said. “The path of least resistance is to locate the new building on the current site. It would be cheaper and more efficient. But we want to engage the public in making that decision. This is the people’s City Hall. We’re trying to build a new City Hall for the next 100 years.”
Soon, commission meetings will move from The Parker to a building at 1 East Broward Blvd., not far from City Hall.
On Tuesday night, the commission approved a $7.4 million plan to sublease space for 64 months — just over five years — in the nearby building at 1 East Broward Blvd. Public meetings will be held in a large room off the lobby.
Meetings will be held there until the new City Hall gets built years from now.
How many years? That’s anyone’s guess.
“I think it will be sooner than five years,” Trantalis said. “I’m hoping three years. We want to do this the right way.”
No one knows how much the building might cost. First they need to figure out how much space and how many floors are needed.
But city officials don’t intend to saddle taxpayers with the entire bill.
The mayor says the city is on the hunt for other funding sources, including help from FEMA, federal grants and low-interest loans.
Stay or move?
Commissioner Steve Glassman says he prefers to rebuild on the current site.
“It saves money on land,” he said. “We have the parking garage and a centrally-located site. Residents are familiar with going to that site. It makes perfect sense. We don’t have to purchase another site. It eliminates several steps and we’ll be able to move faster.”
It’s also important to build for the future, with enough space to keep most City Hall departments together in one building, Glassman said.
“I think it’s going to be quite awhile before we’re all replaced by robots and AI,” he said. “I’m not in favor of a lot of people working remotely.”
Glassman, a longtime historic preservationist, says he will be sad to see the building go but understands it’s the only way to move forward with a new City Hall.
“I have mixed feelings about the building,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to pour millions and millions of dollars into a building that is obsolete. But I will miss the building. Because of the era it was built, I do have sentinel feelings about it. Some people think it’s ugly, but it does represent significant architecture of the day.”
Commissioner John Herbst says the city has one chance to get this right. And if that means taking more time, so be it.
“I certainly don’t want to rush the process,” he said. “This is going to be a defining decision we will live with for the next 50 to 100 years. I want us to take our time and figure out what the future City Hall of Fort Lauderdale looks like. I need us to have a much more open mind and try to predict the future, not predict the past.”
Prepping for the future
The way Herbst sees things, it’s far too early to say whether the building should stay onsite or be built elsewhere.
“I think it’s premature,” Herbst said. “The goal of the task force is for them to explore what our future needs are going to be. I don’t want to make a decision until we know what kind of City Hall we need in the future. Question zero is what is City Hall going to look like and where does it need to be?”
Commissioner Warren Sturman says he’d like everyone to think outside the box.
Who knows, maybe there’s a developer out there willing to swap land with the city, he said. The developer could build in the heart of downtown and the could end up with a bigger parcel to build on.
When the commission was asked on Tuesday whether they wanted to rehab the current City Hall, Sturman said it was easy to say no.
“I’m guessing it’s would cost over $50 million to bring the building up to code and in the end, you still have an old building from the 1960s,” Sturman said.
Sturman does not harbor any sentimental feelings for the old building, shuttered since the flood.
“Oh my God, I hated that building,” he said. “Forty years ago I loved it. It’s like Wheel of Fortune when you go in the elevators. They get stuck sometimes. The building space was all dated. I’m not going to miss that building at all.”
Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @Susannah_Bryan