The Town Board votes to recommend “Option C” for the New Town Hall.  

The current Town Hall along with the old Police Station was constructed back in 1997 when the town had a population of about 18,000 (now it’s 62,000+).  Both were built without a vision for future growth.  The Huntersville Police moved out of their building in 2012 due to a lack of space.  The current Town Hall only has room for about a dozen employees.  Most of our employees are across the street at the Town Center Building (Parks & Rec, Engineering, Planning, IT).  We are starting to max out that space too.  Future headcount will exacerbate that situation further.

The current Town Hall Chamber is too small to hold meetings or conduct even moderate community gatherings.  It has room for about 55 seats when packed tightly (the new town hall will have room for 150+). Even before COVID-19 which requires social distancing, the Monday night Town Board Meetings had folks spilling out into the halls due to lack of space.  We had residents standing on their feet for hours waiting to have their item heard.  Our citizens deserve better.

There is very limited parking at the current location.  Many who attend meetings are forced to park catty-corner across the street on our parking deck.  We can do better than forcing our citizens to walk across two busy roads in the elements to have their elected officials listen to them.

Due to these deficiencies, we are currently holding our Town Board Meetings at the Huntersville Recreation Center.  There is plenty of space but we have to cancel recreational programming on those nights.  We already have limited recreation space and this creates additional stress on already limited space.  This is a disservice to the citizens of this town.

The Future …

The new Town Hall will be built in the area next to the Town Center Building.  The town owns this land.  It’s graded and stormwater is already in place.   There is a town-owned parking deck adjacent to this property.  We don’t have to pay for or pave any additional space in our downtown for parking.  With this new facility, we could provide space for county services, become a voting location, provide community space (HOA/ meetings/trainings/clubs), and many other activities.  In fact, if you look closely at the design, you will notice the community room is carefully designed separate from staff, making the space more useful for community activity.  This new building along with the current Town Center Building means we will have a long-term solution for the future office space needs.

When built, the current Town Hall site will be sold and Huntersville will no longer have government buildings on that corner lot in our downtown. Unless you believe in big government, this is another opportunity to get private development dollars creating new opportunities for economic growth and additional amenities in our downtown (in addition to future revenue property tax / sales tax).  We did the same thing by selling the old police station.

Cost …

So, let’s talk cost.  Despite some misinformation out there, this is a $13,994,004 contract.  Others can publish whatever they want but it does not change the terms of the contract.

Options …

Did we look at other options?  There are some that asked that we explore building “up” on the current town hall.  It was determined that the current structure would not support that modification.  In fact, the study determined that building on the current site (out the back) would be “more expensive” than building a new town hall (almost $1M more).  There would still be limited parking.  In addition, there is the lost opportunity cost (future tax revenue) by not selling off the existing site to a private entity.

Vision …

This town with existing zoning will exceed 100,000+ residents in the future.  The easy decision is to do nothing.  We can just kick the can down the road and leave it to a future board to figure out and fix.  While that’s an easier thing to do, it’s not the right thing. 

The citizens of Huntersville deserve leadership that cares for them, our town employees, and the future of our town.