The Aurora City Council on Tuesday night approved a roughly $660,000 project to renovate the fourth floor of Aurora City Hall that would bring together the city’s full Finance Department on one floor.
The item was passed as part of the consent agenda, so the item was not discussed at Tuesday’s meeting. A $659,674 contract with a 10% contingency was awarded to Lite Construction Inc, the lowest responsible bidder, for the construction work.
At a City Council Infrastructure and Technology Committee meeting last week, Aurora Chief Public Facilities Officer Jim Birchall said the renovation would “demo everything” on the fourth floor and rebuild from a “clean envelope,” including bringing in completely new furniture, redoing the bathrooms and upgrading the lighting to LEDs.
The Finance Department’s current offices, most of which are on the first floor of City Hall, are “antiquated, with awkward allocation of space, and inadequate infrastructure” to meet the city’s needs, according to a staff report included with the City Council’s meeting agenda.
The fourth floor’s offices are also currently “hodgepodge,” with some being too big and some being too small, so the plan is to take down the walls and build back up six private offices and 14 cubicles, Birchall said at the time.
The bathrooms on the fourth floor will also be remodeled, and the bathrooms on the third and fifth floors will be brought up to the current building code, which requires floor drains.
The heating and cooling system would be controlled by a rooftop unit dedicated to the fourth and fifth floors, so the temperature could be adjusted down when people are not in the offices to avoid heating a vacant space, Birchall previously said.
The city is currently working with Lite Construction on a different project, the renovation of 745 Broadway, according to Birchall. Although they aren’t too deep into the project, he is happy with the work they are doing, he said last week.
Also, when they checked Lite’s references, some architecture firms that have worked with them in the past have been “very, very happy with them,” Birchall said at the time.
The staff report from the City Council meeting agenda said the empty space on the first floor left when the Finance Department moves out can be repurposed or combined with the city clerk’s office.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
