City hall gets a facelift

By AMY SATTERWHITE / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

STAFFORD

With new sliding glass doors in place at McMinnville City Hall, officials are planning more changes there beginning this week.

An extensive renovation effort to the front entry stairs is scheduled to begin Tuesday or Wednesday. Complete with solid oak balusters and a new, oak staircase and stairs, the design has been completed by the city’s maintenance supervisor Garvis Stafford.

Stafford, who has previous experience in construction, said he was helped on the project by Woodcarver, Inc., who will be donating trim molding for the interior entrance way.

Officials said the flooring near the entrance doors was a maintenance problem, with heavy rains and cleaning sometimes soaking the police department located in the basement. The new sliding glass doors, which have replaced the old wooden doors, protect the entry area from the weather, as well as provide a safer entrance area.

“We’re just updating the building,” Building and Grounds Chairman Rickey Jones said of the changes. “It was in pretty bad shape. We decided a few years ago to spend a little bit on it to make it as useful as we can.”

Also in place are plans to replace wood light poles in the parking lot with decorative poles and remove carpeting in the main hallway. Officials are also looking at a possible clean-up effort on the second floor. Some painting has already occurred inside the building and some offices have been redone.

The new doors cost about $10,000, with the woodwork for the stairs expected to cost between $1,000 and $3,000. There are funds in this year’s budget, which passed on second reading Monday, to provide for $60,000 worth of office changes to the second floor of the building. However, officials have given no indication those funds would be spent in the immediate future.

Officials have authorized several other changes, such as adding bulletproof glass to the water department offices several months ago.

“We’re glad to get it redone because it was such an eyesore like it was,” Jones added of the entrance area work. “With all that’s going on, we don’t need to build a new municipal building, so hopefully, these fix-ups help make it more usable.”