Wright City government staff are settling into a new city hall that dwarfs the former city offices and reflects local optimism for future growth.“This has been a long time coming. It’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of hard hours put into this to make this happen,” Mayor Dan Rowden said at a Dec. 12 ribbon cutting for the building. “This is a wonderful thing for our city. It will speak volumes for the future of our city.”The new city hall was built within the shell of the former Assembly of God Church at 636 Westwoods Road. It features expanded, enclosed office space for city clerks and administrators, as well as space for the city public works department in a lower level. The Wright City Board of Aldermen now meets in the church’s former sanctuary, which comfortably fits 80 audience members and has seats for the full city administration and board members at a dais at the front of the room.“The whole building is just unbelievable, that we would be going into something like that. It projects a whole different image to people,” said City Clerk and Treasurer Karen Girondo, the longest serving member of city staff.This is the third Wright City Hall Girondo has worked in. When the city moved its government offices in 1996 to the now-former location off of Veterans Memorial Parkway, it was an upgrade from a three-room office two buildings over.“We thought we were in tall cotton,” Girondo said with a nod. The staff thought they had plenty of room to grow after that '96 move, she said. But then the city did grow, with a population boom in the early 2000s. Staffing and space requirements at city hall grew along with it. Last year, city leaders marked the beginning of another growth spurt.The Wright City population was 700 people when Girondo first started as city clerk in 1975. She estimates the number of residents today has surpassed 4,000.“We always hoped we would grow,” Girondo commented. “To see the growth we’ve had, that’s been one of my main (objectives). But back when I first started with the city, it was never thought of to be where we’re at today.”Renovation, costRenovation of the former church began in May 2017, the first stage of a project paid for by a property tax and bond issue approved by voters in 2016. Sports fields adjacent to the new city hall and expansion of the city’s police department into the previous administrative offices at 203 Veterans Memorial Parkway are the next phases.When the projects were first announced, most of the work was expected to be done in 2017. But a major setback came when construction companies submitted work bids that far exceeded the expectations of Wright City aldermen.The lowest construction bid for all three phases was $1.5 million, but that would have left major portions of the renovations incomplete, to be done at a future date. Doing all the work on the city’s list would have cost almost $2.2 million at least.Instead of taking on that cost to have the work done through a general contractor, city leaders directed project manager Jim Schuchmann to begin the long task of overseeing the work directly, and doing much of it himself. Schuchmann, a former alderman and longtime home builder, was hired at the beginning of May 2017.Now, 18 months later, Schuchmann said renovation costs for the new city hall will come in right around $1 million.“It ended up costing a little bit more (than expected), but we got a lot more in here than what was originally included,” Schuchmann said. That includes a new roof, complete reconstruction and expansion of the parking lot and entry drive, an interior elevator lift, replacing all the plumbing and installing new HVAC units. The building also has modern security features for city staff.The objective, Schuchmann said, was to do cost-effective work that the city could be proud of and that would endure for decades to come. Being a city resident himself, he said he was conscious of making sure all tax money from citizens was wisely spent.For this project, that meant taking a little extra time.“There’s an old adage in construction. You can have it cheap, quick or quality — you can have two, you can’t have three,” Schuchmann said. “We went for quality and cost effective. So ‘quick’ had to take a little bit of a back seat.”Schuchmann will next oversee renovation of the city’s former administrative office space for use by the police department. Administrators and police previously shared space in the former city hall, which will now be dedicated wholly to law enforcement. With a budget of $500,000, Schuchmann said there is plenty of work to be done in the building.The city also has yet to finish sports fields adjacent to the new city hall, which were promised to citizens as part of the project. Those were originally planned to be small baseball fields, but city staff have reported a shifting interest toward soccer programs. So although another $300,000 is set aside for the fields, Schuchmann said they might not cost nearly that much.Assuming the maximum budget is spent for those phases, Wright City will have spent $1.8 million for the construction and renovation, plus the $320,000 to purchase the new city hall property.

The new Wright City Hall at 636 Westwoods Road is open to the public. The hall was renovated from the former Assembly of God Church, and took more than a year to complete. Works remains to build sports fields adjacent to the building. 

Record photo

Wright City Mayor Dan Rowden, center, cuts the ribbon during an evening open house celebration Dec. 12 to mark the opening of the new Wright City Hall at 636 Westwoods Road. 

Record photo/Adam Rollins

The Wright City Board of Aldermen and city administrators held their first official gathering in the new Wright City Hall at 636 Westwoods Road Thursday, Dec. 13. The building opened to the public Dec. 17. 

Record photo/Adam Rollins