The Covington Board of Commissioners released design concepts for its new city hall building at their meeting Tuesday night.
These were the first official images the city has released to the public since it contracted with architectural firms Brandstetter Carroll, Inc. and Elevar Design Group in February. Although they do not represent the final designs of the new building, they offer insight into what the city hopes to accomplish.
“We thought it would be important to let the public see where we are today and see what direction we’re headed in,” said Mayor Joe Meyer.
The commissioners and mayor declined to talk about issues of funding and construction timelines during the meeting. However, the city’s webpage says that it hopes to begin construction early next year with a move-in date sometime in 2025. City staff members at the meeting said municipal bonds would likely fund the project.
Kim Patton, the president of Elevar, presented the design concepts to the commissioners and other meeting attendees.
“Between the public buildings that are adjacent to [to the building site] on either side and the materials you use, we were looking for, I think, a little more traditional style and a space,” Patton said.
The building site is in the 600 block of Scott Street, at the former location of the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky and a small park. Flanking either side of the land is the Kenton County Library branch to the north and the post office to the south.
“The site in the middle is the site we’re looking at for this building,” Patton said after describing how those other public institutions provided the combination of aesthetic cues the firm took when thinking about how to integrate the building into the surrounding area.
Covington’s current city building is a rented and converted department store on Pike Street. The city moved there in 2013 after a developer bought up the previous city hall building and turned it into what is now Hotel Covington. Commissioners and city staff frequently complain about the building’s odd layout and lack of proper facilities for carrying out government work, as well as the commission chambers’ poor lighting and acoustics.
“The city and those that work within it desperately need a new city hall,” Covington Commissioner Tim Downing said.
The new building will stand three stories tall and will occupy about 42,000 square feet. The area immediately in front of the building will be a large, open plaza wherein the city can host public events, presentations and issue public statements. One of the walls in the plaza will be designated for public art projects.
“We see this building having both the old and new and a mix,” Patton said.
The new commission chambers will have full-size windows, allowing natural light to enter the room, making it easier to conduct commission business.
There was some discussion among the commission members about the cladding lining the outside of the building. Patton said they were recommending limestone cladding for the building, saying that it had “a higher level of finish” than brick and fit well with the other public buildings in the area.
“There’s many, many different types of texturing you can do to the limestone,” said Elevar Architect Jonny Hoffman. “Different quarries have different coloring. Some are more gray; some are a little more robust in color. We’re trying to get the warmest limestone we can, and then on top of that we’re looking at different patterning and treatment of the limestone.”
Commissioner Ron Washington asked about what sorts of amenities, such as an exercise room, the building might have, which he said could potentially attract talent to city employment.
Patton said that the current designs do not feature an exercise room. Instead, he touted the building’s open spaces, natural lighting, second-floor balcony and the versatility of its rooms.
“We’ve not programmed in a workout space or a traditional training space like that,” Patton said, but he added that that could change depending on how the project progresses.
Click on the images below to see full-size versions of the concept renderings.
The next two meetings of the Covington Board of Commissioners will be canceled as they overlap with Halloween and Election Day, respectively. The commission will meet again on Tuesday, Nov. 14.
