Committee considers City Hall design competition

An architectural design competition may determine the look of a new Whitefish City Hall.

The ad hoc steering committee for the new building last week decided on a preliminary plan for architect selection. Ultimately the committee’s recommendations are forwarded to the city council.

The committee decided to draft a request for qualifications to solicit architects for the project. Then based upon responses to the RFQ, the committee will likely narrow the applicants down to five.

Those architects will then be invited to participate in a design competition to allow the city to chose the best architect for the project.

City Manager Chuck Stearns told the committee that under the design competition method of selection, architects are routinely given a small fee for their participation. He suggested the fee could be about $2,000 as a way to encourage firms to put the most effort into the process.

“The pro is that you get real creative thinking,” he said. “The con is that you have to pay money for the process.”

Many of the committee members agreed that the design competition would give greater insight into which architect might be best for the project prior to selection. However, members seem to disagree on how much latitude to give the architects as part of the design competition.

Phil Mitchell said if the parameters for City Hall aren’t narrowed then the design competition could be messy with several different designs that don’t compare with one another.

“Is it better to have City Hall on one level or three?” he asked. “There are huge things we need to discuss.”

Ross Anderson countered saying that less parameters might be better.

“We have to give them freedom to be creative and we’ll decide who has the best idea,” he said. “The benefit of the competition is that you get an idea of what you’re buying before you hire an architect.”

Mitchell wanted more information on cost of the building and decisions by the city council on how the building should look.

“Until the council makes a decision on the parking structure we can’t move forward,” he said. “We need more information to make a decision. We don’t know the cost. There has got to be parameters or we’ll get a $15 million design and only have $5 million to spend.”

Stearns noted that the guidelines for the architects could include a cost per square foot that the city is willing to pay for the new building.

The city council recently agreed to go forward with geotechnical testing for a parking garage at Baker and Second Street. The council expects to get more information on the feasibility in the coming months.

In the interim, the city’s parking consultants have created a few conceptual designs for how a parking garage and City Hall building might look. Concepts include constructing City Hall offices on the first floor of the building with parking on two levels above. An alternative design would put City Hall on three floors along Second Street and the parking garage to the north of the block.

The city has already chosen an architect to design the parking structure, but exactly what that structure will look like is still up for discussion.

“Right now City Hall is married to the parking structure,” Stearns said. “It’s most efficient to have one architect working with the parking engineers, but we never said we couldn’t have an architect for City Hall. There will be a firewall between the parking and City Hall. They are distinct enough that it could have two architects.”

Stearns noted that going through a formal selection process for the City Hall architect selection would help determine whether to have one or two architects for the overall project.

The committee is expected to look at a draft request for qualifications at its December meeting.