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New City Hall and Library

Dedication - June 30, 2009

For the past several years, the City of Dickinson has worked toward building a new City Hall and Library.  Within the last year, the City Council decided to proceed with two separate buildings for the City Hall and Library and to construct the new facilities on the land where the current City Hall and Mares Memorial Library are located today as well as some additional land purchased by the City for this project.  The City extended an offer to Galveston County WCID #1 to participate in the project in an effort to provide greater convenience to the citizens and save both the City and WCID #1 money.

In May of 2008, the City Council and Galveston County WCID #1 entered into a contract that will allow both entities to co-locate offices in the new City Hall building.  Through the contract, Galveston County WCID #1 is participating with the City financially in construction of the City Hall building.  Following the finalization of that contract, the City proceeded with the issuance of $6.5 million in bonds for the new City Hall/Library Complex and demolished three buildings that the City had previously purchased around the current City Hall property.  

In early October of 2007, the City and Library relocated to their temporary locations.  The temporary City Hall is located at 1621 FM 517 East, and the temporary Library is located at 1837 FM 517 East.  At the same time that the City Hall and Library were being moved, the City opened bids on the City Hall/Library Complex and discovered that the project had come in at nearly twice the construction budget of $4.5 million.  The total budget for the project is $6.5 million.  In accordance with the City’s agreement with architectural firm Hall, Barnum & Lucchesi, the firm and architect Bill Hall are required to modify the design of the project to bring it into budget.  The City immediately advised architect Bill Hall to proceed with developing the modifications to the project design that would bring the project into budget.  The architect began that work in November of 2007.

It was anticipated that Mr. Hall would present the design modifications to the City Administrator in mid-December of 2007.  However, on the date that the City Administrator anticipated receiving the design modifications, she was advised by Mr. Hall that, while he and the contractor had a list of the design modifications, they were still working on pricing those modifications and would not have everything ready for discussion until the first week of January.  It is now anticipated that the design modifications will be presented to the City Council on January 8, 2008. 

While the work on design modifications has been in progress, the City has proceeded with its work to prepare for demolishing the old buildings.  Asbestos abatement was completed in November of 2007, and demolition of the old Police building will be completed in early January of 2008.  The communication tower was removed and initial demolition work was started at that location in December of 2007.

The project was completed in June of 2009 and the new buildings were dedicated on June 30, 2009.  The City Hall/WCID #1 building consists of 22,754 square feet of office space.  This includes a state of the art City Council Chamber/Municipal Court Room.  The library consist of 12,299 square feet and consist of a great selection of books and offers computers for the public to use.