O Yeah! We're back to that "Transformation" thing ...Behold for yourself: “The idea with that no of transparency and so much glass, is so that citizens and residents can see all the way through it, just like their government should be transparent,” Heirshberg said.
TRANSPARENCY HE SAID ,............
Mesa to transform historic council chambers
City officials are embarking on a “generational opportunity” to “reimagine and reinvent City Hall” with a new building and site for the city council chambers.
The chambers serve as the heart of Mesa’s democracy, where the public interfaces with elected officials and actions.
Staff unveiled plans to Mesa’s Design Review Board on Aug. 9, giving Mesa’s review boards their first opportunity to weigh in on the look and design of the new building.
Board members generally liked what they saw, offering just a few minor suggestions to city staff.
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Mesa’s new chambers won’t be massive, but their symbolism is huge for a city whose leaders want to project the sense to residents and visitors that Mesa is a vital, modern city on the make.
The plan is to relocate the chambers from their current location at 1st Street and Centennial Way to the southeast corner of Center and Main Streets at Mesa City Plaza, on the site of the current annex building.
Crews will demolish the annex building to make way for the new chambers.
The city expects demolition to begin in January 2023.
Mesa’s current five-year capital improvement plan calls for the building to be funded out of the city’s capital general fund.
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Officials said they are still working on an estimate for the final costs.
Deputy City Manager Marc Heirshberg presented the plans for the two-story glass, steel and terracotta tile structure to the Design Review Board.
Heirshberg said the materials were chosen to keep the building consistent with some of the recently built and existing buildings in this section of downtown, such as the ASU at Mesa City Center building not far from the site.
Designers imagined the 160-seat main council chambers as a “building within a building,” sitting on the second floor, almost as if on display above an airy lobby.
The building is topped with a thick metal roof overhanging the walls at an angle.
“It’s a beautiful building. I really appreciate it,” board member Jeanette Knudsen told city officials.
The inside of the chamber is intended to be partially visible from the outside, and vice versa, the transparency achieved abundant panels of glass.
The city’s architect for the project, Adaptive Architects, wrote in the project narrative that one of the themes of the project is “jewel in the desert,” and they nodded to this idea by making the building attractive when lit up from the inside at night.
The building will have programmable LEDs so staff can change colors for certain occasions.
The roof will be embellished with touches of red, amber and blue – Mesa’s primary city colors.
The design board praised the design to incorporate color as well as other choices in the design.
One of the main topics of concern for board members was whether the new council chambers building looked visually connected enough to the Mesa City Plaza tower to which it will be connected.
The eight-story building was constructed in 1975 and is heavily accented with copper stripping.
The board seemed to agree that more could be done to visually tie the old and new buildings together.
“You’re not going to get me to say anything bad about the design, I think it looks nice,” board member Dane Astle said. “My only comments really come to the connection and the similarities that would come between the two (buildings) becoming one.”
The discussion last week was the first of two reviews the council chamber plans will receive from the board.
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