Council wants to raise city hall roof

The Maitland City Council agrees on two things — they like the design of their new city hall and fire station. They also agree that the buildings don’t mesh well.

The two public buildings, which share a common wall, will be built on Packwood Avenue between Independence Lane and Maitland Avenue, where the current fire station is. Both are three stories tall.

John Cunningham of ACi architects told the City Council on Monday that his company was scheduled to issue the request for construction proposals on Saturday, Oct. 2, with the hope of beginning construction in April.

But that important step will likely be postponed, as the City Council and residents have expressed concern about the overall design of the two buildings.

The fire station is slated to have a traditional look with brick on the exterior. The City Hall design has a Mediterranean look with a barrel tile roof and white stucco exterior.

Individually, they garnered a lot of praise. But when Cunningham put up a PowerPoint slide that showed the two together on Packwood Avenue, it was a whole different story.

City Council members said the fire station overpowers the city hall. Currently the two buildings share a roofline, except for the city hall’s spire, which extends up about another 20 feet.

“I think the city hall should be taller and more prominent, whether it involves the spire, I don’t know,” Councilman Phil Bonus said. “We gotta do something. I don’t like the way they look next to each other.”

But a change like that will cost money. Maitland already plans to borrow another $1.7 million in addition to the $8.5 million citizens voted to allow the city to borrow in 2005 to build public buildings, including the recently completed police station.

On Monday, City Council raised the city’s debt millage to the cap, 50 cents per $1,000 of taxable value, for the fiscal year that starts Friday. That will allow them to borrow extra money.

The city hall budget is $4 million and the fire station, which has a groundbreaking slated for December, will cost $3.3 million.

“I would like a higher roof but it depends on the money too,” Councilwoman Linda Frosch said.

But raising the roof concerned architect Cunningham.

“The only way you could raise the roof is to raise the pitch of roof and then you’ll identify with Pizza Hut,” he said.

There are other options to make the building taller: increase the height of the first floor or use fill dirt to raise the foundation, which would require stairs to get to the entrance of city hall.

ACi is going to bring back a contextual site plan in two weeks, Cunningham said. Making the building taller would take about four weeks.

“We’ll have to throw more money and time at it,” he said.

Councilwoman Bev Reponen said that she wants to be sure the residents can be proud of the buildings.

“I’ve found one person who likes (the design of) the Village at Lake Lily,” she said. “Everyone else comes to complain, so I don’t want to do that thing.”

Maitland residents at the meeting praised proposals to make city hall more prominent.

“I, as a designer, like both buildings,” resident Chris Raleigh said. “The problem is the way that they come together. … I’m very much in favor of finding money somewhere else to raise it (city all’s roof).”

Resident Jere Pile said the buildings are not in scale.

“It looks like we built city hall 25 years ago and then built the fire station,” Pile said. “No one disagrees both buildings are beautiful, they just don’t look right together.

“This is not what we envisioned for the beginning of our downtown.”