Mesa unveils new City Hall Chamber
Mesa City Council will be holding its first meeting in a new City Hall Chamber Dec. 2. The $32.3-million makeover transformed the dingy two-story building into a sleek meeting place with tall windows throughout.
Mesa City Council will hold its first public meeting Dec. 5 in a new City Hall Chamber at Main and Central streets that comes with a lot of symbolism.
A $32.3-million makeover transformed a nondescript two-story gray concrete building housing Human Resources and Economic Development into a modern-looking, inviting community meeting place incorporating tall windows throughout.
Even the Council Chambers on the second floor is partly encased in glass, allowing for a 120-degree view into and out of the room.
“A lot of light, lot of windows - transparency,” City Manager Chris Brady said as he toured the building prior to a public open house Nov. 23. “We try to make it very open. The business of the city is very open.
“Literally, you could stand outside the building and see what’s happening in here,” Brady said. “We work really hard with not only the lighting inside of this room but the light that’s coming in. And then at night the light from this building shines back out through those windows.
“Light is a really kind of important theme for us, both making it easy to see in this building but as well as being able to emit light from this building.”
Brady said effort was made to ensure the building would be “uniquely Mesa.”
“From the terracotta that’s hanging on the walls, we look for the texture and the colors that would represent Mesa, that would look like Mesa with the surrounding natural environment around us,” he said. “The architect also included some colors based on the darker reds or kind of resembled the old Lehi brick that was made in Mesa when Mesa was kind of being developed.”
Even the terrazzo reflects a lot of those colors, he said pointing to the flooring.
City Manager Chris Brady said, “We try to make it very open. The business of the city is very open.”
“We put the copper and the richer colors that we associate with Mesa and Arizona,” Brady said.
Much thought went into the location – putting the City Hall building at two major streets considered the center of Mesa, according to Brady.
“We recognized that this corner, Center and Main, was for us,” he said. “Symbolically it’s one of the most significant intersections of the city. We wanted this building to sit on that corner and really make a strong gesture out to the community.”
The building’s eye-catching decor is the public art in the lobby or what Brady refers to as the “the living room” for City Hall.
One piece, called “Flip Side,” consists of 300 acrylic tiles with black-and-white headshots of Mesa residents on one side and their handwritten messages on the other side suspended by metal rods.
Another is a screen projecting live digital art in the lobby, created by new media experts from Arizona State University’s MIX Center.
And right above the staircase leading to council chambers is an abstract sculpture suspended from the ceiling called “Convergence.”
The main lobby offers a comfortable, eye-catching environment.
Public art also will be installed outside the building.
“There’s art that’s very obvious and safe and there’s art that’s very subtle,” Brady said pointing to a wall off the lobby area. “You can kind of see the outline of Red Mountain and the cactus.
“We hired a photographer to go take some iconic views of the surroundings of Mesa. The architect worked with a contractor who then created the pixelation of that wall covering to kind of get the outline of the photography. So again, bringing some of that Mesa into the building.”
The building, which has all the high-tech equipment needed so council can work, also includes a meeting room downstairs for study sessions, an outdoor public gathering area and a couple of conference rooms where council members and staff can meet with the public.
The 165-seat council chamber also was designed to be less intimidating for residents wishing to address the council.
“Because the way that we built this space, it’s almost like you’re walking into the same room with the council,” Brady said. “We’re trying to make that engagement feel comfortable.”
According to city spokeswoman Ana Pereira, the $32.3 million project cost also included the furnishings, landscape and improvements to the right-of-way.
Mesa City Manager Chris Brady stands in front of the sweeping glass rotunda of the city council chambers upstairs in the new Mesa City Hall, Wednesday, November 20, 2024, in Mesa, Arizona. (David Minton/Staff Photographer)
The project was primarily funded by setting aside one-time revenues of construction sales tax, she said in an email.
“Mesa had been considering building a new City Hall for about 10 years,” she said. “Our current council chambers are over 40 years old. More than dated, the building is uninviting, not functional and lacks proper accessibility – all of which were not priorities when it was built in the late 1970s.”
The new City Hall Chamber, Pereira pointed out, was designed to “encourage engagement between our citizens and Mesa city government.”
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