Cottonwood City Administrator Teather Bliss talked about the features of the new Cottonwood City Council chambers, in the newly-renovated City Hall building on West Main Street. The city turned a vacant former clinic building into city offices.

COTTONWOOD — The city of Cottonwood now has a new home for its local government. On Friday, members of the public were invited to come see the newly-renovated Cottonwood City Hall, located on West Main Street.

The city of Cottonwood recently completed a roughly $167,000 project shaping a vacant clinic building into a new City Hall. The building now has space like a meeting room, and offices for city staff and area law enforcement, said Cottonwood City Administrator Teather Bliss.

Bliss talked about the renovation project during a public open house at City Hall on Friday morning.

Bliss said there were a few different factors leading up to the renovation project. One was the Cottonwood City Council’s changing needs for holding public meetings. After the COVID pandemic, the council started meeting at the Cottonwood fire hall. The fire hall had enough space, but it was hard to hear people clearly, especially if they were calling in to a meeting, Bliss said.

The new City Hall council room has better acoustics, and updated technology like video screens that can be used during meetings, she said.

Other factors in the project included a need for city record storage space. Both the former city office building and the Cottonwood Senior Center building had suffered storm and water damage over the past few years. According to an informational handout at the open house, the Senior Center received storm damage in 2022 that resulted in $35,000 in cleanup and repair costs, while the cost to renovate and fully repair the building was $100,000. Water damage in the basement of the former city office also resulted in a loss of city records. The informational handout said the cost to renovate and waterproof the basement was about $70,000.

Bliss said the city of Cottonwood opted to renovate a property owned by the Cottonwood Economic Development Authority, that could serve as a city office, meeting space and storage space. The EDA deeded the new City Hall building to the city, and the city would deed the former city office and Senior Center buildings to the EDA. The goal is to sell those two properties, “So they can go back on the tax roll,” Bliss said.

The final expenses for the city hall project came to $167,678, Bliss said. “(The work) was all locally done. We saved a lot of money,” she said. The city had also done some capital planning for redeveloping the city office building for the past five years, she said.

Of the total project cost, $112,616 came from non-city revenue sources. About $92,000 came from American Rescue Plan Act funding, and another $20,000 came from one-time state aid, Bliss said.

The new City Hall building includes features like a city council meeting room, offices, and space for Lyon County Sheriff’s deputies to use when they are in Cottonwood, Bliss said. The front lobby also has some nods to Cottonwood’s history, with a display of vintage street signs from around the city.

“These were the ones that had been up forever,” before the city switched over to reflective green street signs, she said.

The city plans to renovate the building’s basement into additional storage space for city records and a storm shelter, Bliss said. Renovations also included landscaping, a new sign and construction of a new ramp outside the building.

“We re-did the front here,” Bliss said. The new ramp had a less steep slope, making it ADA-compliant, she said.