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The town of Breckenridge will invest $800,000 in improving and renovating the town hall building on Ski Hill Road as part of a domino-effect department shuffle.
The remodel has been on hold for several years while members of the town council weighed relocating the town hall to the old CMC building. But with the historic Harris Street structure repurposed and set to be renovated as a library and community center instead, officials are now pushing forward with the improvements to the building that will remain town hall for the foreseeable future.
“We’re doing it as bare bones as we can, but yet trying to meet the future needs for the next 10, 15, 20 years,” Breckenridge spokeswoman Kim Dykstra-DiLallo said. “We (looked at) what are the build-out needs and determined that the current town hall could do that; we just need to remodel a few things.”
Primarily, the bathrooms, which in the current building are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and will represent the biggest expense of the remodel.
But the project will also aim to make town hall, currently an older facility with a complex vertical layout, more approachable for the public, officials said. Improvements will include a more open floor plan and a welcome and reception desk near the entrance to help visitors better navigate the building.
“Our primary intent with these changes is to create a more open atmosphere for customers from the point of entry into the building and a more centralized location on the middle level for customer interactions,” a Breckenridge staff memo on the remodel stated.”
At one point the town hall building appeared to be too small to accommodate the growing town operations. But the Breckenridge police and public works departments have since been relocated to their own buildings, alleviating the space problem, town officials said. The improvements will be purely structural and will not involve expanding the existing footprint of the building. There will be no new parking added.
The project is expected to take approximately four months to complete and will likely be done in one phase of construction to limit the amount of disruption to town operations.
Various departments will have to be moved around during the remodel, which officials say will likely impede but not completely stop the work of town employees.
“We’re trying to do it in sections,” Dykstra-DiLallo said. “It is going to be impactful at some point. We won’t stop operations of any department.”
The timeframe of the construction project is still unclear, but town hall will remain open to the public throughout.
Courtesy of the Summit Daily News
