Bristol Moving Forward On City Hall Renovation

By Dean Wright, The Bristol Press

June 14, 2021

Bristol City Council moving forward on City Hall renovation efforts.

“We’re going to be leaving this building for a year and redoing it because it’s a very sick building and there are a lot of issues with it,” said Bristol Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu. “Up until two years ago, we had our own court system here in Bristol, the state court. It was over in the police department building. It was called GA17. They closed that as part of budget cuts. So there’s another floor of City Hall over there that we’ve not determined what we wanted to do with it yet because we knew this project was coming.”

The mayor anticipates that City Hall offices will utilize the space once renovations efforts get underway. The city is still in discussions with another entity about moving remaining offices into a larger leased space as renovations continue.

The mayor noted that the aging ventilation system of City Hall needed to be replaced, among other issues.

“We've had lead and asbestos in the building we’ve been dealing with for years,” said the mayor. “That’s an employee safety and public safety issue. It’s also not ADA accessible. So we have to fix all that.”

The mayor also said that City Hall had been built in 1963, prior to fire sprinklers being required as a standard feature on public buildings.

“We’ve hired a construction manager-at-risk and an architect,” said Zoppo-Sassu. “We’ll ramp up efforts in the fall.”

The mayor noted renovations efforts could cost around $30 million.

“We are crunching some numbers because we believe that due to ventilation and air quality being a key component of this building that some of our American Rescue Plan dollars could be allocated to that. It would then lower the amount of money we would have to borrow and save the (local) taxpayers some money,” said the mayor.

Zoppo-Sassu noted the city was still figuring out what the overall expense of what an HVAC system replacement would be.

The city has hired has hired Colliers Project Leaders to oversee the project.