The Covington city commission on Tuesday put forward a plan to renew the city’s lease at 20 West Pike Street where City Hall has been located since 2013.
The City of Covington became a renter that year when it sold its Madison Avenue building to be developed as Hotel Covington.
Since then, the city has leased its Pike Street home from the same people who developed the hotel around the corner. While affiliated with the Salyers Group, the company does business as Bopper Properties in relation to the city’s lease.
While a permanent home is still the city’s goal, that won’t happen before the expiration of the current lease, so next week, the city commission is expected to approve a one-year lease extension. The lease was originally signed in 2013 and renewed in 2018 at an annual rate of $255,000.
In 2021, Covington purchased the plots of land at 620 and 622 Scott Street next to Lee’s Famous Recipe. The purchase price of the lots, which are currently empty fields, was $550,000.
The site is expected to be home to a newly constructed city building.
The plot of land was previously owned by Gateway Community and Technical College Foundation and was slated to be a part of the school’s plan to build an expansive downtown campus. After being introduced in 2011, the plan failed to materialize fully.
“As you know, we’ve acquired some of the land and preliminary design work has begun regarding a new City Hall,” Covington City Manager Ken Smith said. “All of that will obviously not be ready in time for the expiration of our four-year initial term. We’re currently waiting for this fall.”
The current City Hall is out of space, Smith said. The city staff has grown in size. The new Public Works Building was floated as an idea to help alleviate office capacity concerns. But Smith said that while the Public Works Building offers extensive meeting and break room space, it does not offer much office space.
“Well, I would certainly say that we are out of space,” Smith said. “Literally, there is not a desk in City Hall that is not being occupied. So we are looking at all options about where we can put people.”
In 2018, the city commissioners voted unanimously to enter into an approximately $20,000 contract with Bellevue-based urban growth firm YARD & Company. The purpose of the contract was to begin investigating what a new City Hall would mean for Covington.
Covington City Hall has been in five different locations over the past 50 years. The City launched a privately funded effort called “BeSpoke” to consider what the community would want from a new city hall.
The 16-member task force, made up of residents, government officials and local business owners met for 10 months to come up with the best possible answers. The task force decided a new city hall should:
- Be in a visible, accessible, central, and prominent site that is “both symbolically and physically important to Covington.”
- Not be a “single-purpose fortress” dedicated only to government offices but one with regular community events and programming.
- As a true civic commons, include “a place for community voice, debate, and demonstrations.”
- And celebrate the city’s architectural diversity and history.
Despite a retrofit, the building is inadequate for government functions, lacking office space, meeting rooms for large groups, technology, a lobby area, and even a lunchroom. Desks are jammed into hallways, closets, and common areas. People who work closely together are physically separated.
The current City Hall that lacks any plaza or exterior area that could be considered a civics commons. The task force concluded the current City Hall is uninviting and uninspiring to business prospects, out-of-town officials, visitors, and citizens.
