Tulsa's City Hall Has A New Home

Friday, July 13th 2007, 9:59 am

By: News On 6

The city of Tulsa is headed for a major move, to abandon the existing city hall in favor of consolidating most city offices at One Technology Center. The vote to make the deal was taken Thursday night. The News On 6â€™s Emory Bryan reports Tulsa's new city hall should be open for business by next spring, moving most city employees under one roof.

That has some advantages for employees, and Mayor Kathy Taylor says she wants to make sure it works for the public too.

"We've done what's called an adjacency study to determine which groups work most together and which work most closely with the public to ensure public access, that's paramount and high priority and also efficiency of space,â€ Taylor said.

The mayor wants as much of city government in the one building as possible. All of the city employees in the Hartford Building on the east side of downtown will move, and the building will likely be sold. The administrative staff of the parks department will move out of their offices in Newblock Park, and it's been suggested that the building could be leased out for use as a restaurant.

The staff at Fire Department Headquarters will move too, but the city will need to find another place to store some of the equipment that's there now. That's an issue as well for the streets and engineering divisions, now at 23rd and Jackson. The administrators need to be close to the staff and equipment, and that's not possible in the new building.

The city council looked at studies of all those issues before making the decision to buy the building, which even they said was an incredibly complex deal.

"I can tell you that unless you have gone through these two books which are least the size of five Bibles that you don't understand the deal either way,â€ said city councilor Bill Martinson.

The mayor told us Friday afternoon she's already had a call from a developer about the existing city hall and had interest from two companies wanting to handle the leasing for the new building.

As for what happens to the current buildings and the land, it's up to the mayor and council, who will possibly transfer them to the Tulsa Development Authority or sell them outright, but that decision is several months away at the earliest.

For more information on One Technology Center, click here.

Watch the video: Impact Of Moving City Hall

Related stories:

3/16/2007 Tulsa Mayor Thinking Of Moving City Hall

4/12/2007 Sneak Peek At A City Hall

6/7/2007 Mayor Moves Forward With Plans To Move City Hall

6/23/2007 City Councilors Discuss Moving City Hall

7/12/2007 - Purchase Of New City Hall Building Approved