Сотрудники отдела развития и инженерии города временно переедут в здание Axis Health System

The city’s Community Development and Engineering teams will be moving in with Axis Health System as part of a temporary relocation during construction in the city hall and police station project. The lease and relocation are slated to begin Oct. 1 to ensure the city employees have office space before their building is demolished as part of the city hall project. The Community Development department and the Engineering office, a division of the Public Works Department, currently work at a joint office building on 12th Street. This building is expected to be demolished. “This lease is a similar need as the recently approved sublease in the Innovation Center for the Prosperity office, and is one of the pieces necessary to facilitate the city hall and police department construction project,” said Erin Hyder, assistant city manager, at the Sept. 1 council meeting. The prosperity office finalized a sublease with Fort Lewis College at the Center for Innovation after final approval and authorization from City Council at an Aug. 4 meeting. The Prosperity office entered into a one-year sublease with the option to renew in 2027. Community Development and Engineering followed a similar model: a one-year lease with the option to continue on a month-to-month basis pending construction status, Hyder said. The two departments will be moving about 30 employees, collectively, into the new space on the second floor of the Axis Health System building at 150 Mercury Village Drive. When considering viable options for the relocation, the city took into account the roughly 18 engineering employees and 14 community development staff members it would have to move. It also looked for spaces with conference rooms, as well as a publicly accessible office with a reception area for visitors. “Those were our requirements,” Hyder said. “Our preference also was looking for a space where we were able to keep these two departments together in the same location given their daily collaborative work.” The temporary home of the two offices will have a conference room, two private offices, and an open space that can be configured as needed for the two departments, she said. The space costs the city just over $9,000 a month, which ultimately comes to $108,264 annually, which she said was allotted for under the city hall project budget. “This is an anticipated expense,” Hyder said. “Funding for the temporary relocation was contemplated as part of the city hall project planning.” The city did pursue different construction sequencing options to avoid the relocation, but found it too costly overall, Councilor Jessika Loyer said in the meeting. Staging construction differently to avoid the $108,000 cost to the city would have produced about $650,000 in additional project costs and an additional year of construction, Loyer said and Hyder confirmed. [email protected]