So, the city is in a bind, because the state passed a law that you can’t borrow money to build your city hall. (Unless you get voters to approve a bond.) Our city hall is 50 years old, and staff and council constantly say how inadequate it is.
So city staff presents two vague plans:
(That’s a screenshot from the workshop. I couldn’t find a packet.)
The plan on the left is a bunch of new buildings on the same site as the current City Hall. The plan on the right has city hall moved across Hopkins, between the library and the dog park.
Funding is tricky, because voters are unlikely to approve a bond project for a new City Hall. So there are some creative ways to fund it, and they’ll probably kludge together a bunch of different solutions. Basically, you tie in a bunch of different purposes and get a lot of organizations to share the cost.
Max Baker and Jude Prather ask staff to consider thinking about a downtown site. The current Hays County Courthouse was built maybe 10-12 years ago. Before that, they used the strip mall that is currently Industry and Aquabrew. And that building, before it was the Hays County Justice Center, had been the old HEB.
Guys. GUYS. I was trying to find a photo online of the old Justice Center, and coming up empty. Then I recalled that I personally took some photos of it, a long time ago.
I used to call it the Supermarket of Justice:
I took that photo back in 2008, back when I was a lower case marxist.
But now I’m a big Marxist. I’ve got a blog, see? (I’m SO pleased that I was actually able to locate those old photos.)
Back to the point. In the days of the Supermarket of Justice, there was a large population of daytime employees in downtown. When the county employees all moved out to Stagecoach, the downtown became empty during the day. It has not quite ever recovered.
So putting City Hall downtown would put a serious number of employees using our restaurants and the fabric of downtown on a daily basis. It would definitely be more expensive, but maybe be worth it.
Saul and Jane are on the side of “Keep it cheap, keep it by the parks.” Max, Jude, and maybe Alyssa and maybe Mark are potentially interested in moving it downtown? I’m intrigued by a downtown city hall. But I do not want us to sell off the current land – surely we can find a quality civic use for it.
(You know what made me sad? When the Government Records department vacated southeast corner of Hopkins and Guadalupe. I’m a softie for public works.)
PS: I also took a few more photos, back in 2008:
There was a church on I-35 that sold clawfoot bathtubs:
right by Riverside Drive. I called it The Clawfoot Bathtub Church, for obvious reasons.
With this menacing Daffy Duck out front.
(I can’t figure out how Daffy is not visible from the first photo, since I would have taken both photos on the same day?! Maybe hidden behind the sign?)
And lastly, our beautiful river, doing what it does best:
being beautiful.
There is one photo that I did not take, and I regret it so much. Back then, the Chamber of Commerce was in the same building as now, on CM Allen, but it had a different sign. The font on the sign was the most ridiculous Mr. Rogers font.
In my memory, it looked something like this:
Maybe with the S, M, and C’s being even more swooping and absurd?
It looked very un-businesslike, and I miss it. If anyone has a photo of it, it would make me so happy.
The San Marxist 