City eyes newer building for new city hall

By BOB MOREHEAD

BGNN senior staff writer

BARBERTON  The building secured and the engineering half done, Barberton is taking an abrupt turn in its bid for a new municipal office home.

Instead of the 40-plus-year-old former FirstMerit building downtown, bought with $850,000 of federal COVID relief money, officials are eying the much newer Summit County Developmental Disabilities building on W Hopocan Avenue.

Jason Dodson of the Roetzel and Andress law firm explained the idea at the June 8 city council meeting. Barberton had bought the vacant FirstMerit building intending to move all city offices there except the police and law departments and the municipal court. Those would remain at the current municipal building, which will be a justice center. The existing building was built to last, but that is part of the problem. Before the first decade was out, the city understood its mistake. The world and the departments serving it changed but thick walls of solid, reinforced concrete mightily resist attempts to reconfigure spaces. Cabling new technology is an adventure.

The FirstMerit building was built in the 1980s and is modular. The office spaces can be rearranged with little difficulty, but not for free. As architects began drawing up the plans, compromises had to be made to make the rearrangements fit into a budget that was already quite large. Council members balked at some of those, including space devoted to the Active Adult Center and accessible restrooms on the first floor.

The DD building was built in 2010 and renovated in 2020. Dodson said he was having lunch with a colleague, describing the challenges of the Barberton project, the colleague brought up the DD building. While that structure is practically new, since it was built the agency underwent significant changes, including the very nature of the services it provides. This building became superfluous. Dodson arranged a tour and was amazed at the fit.

“It was as if they built it with what Barberton needed in mind,” Dodson said.

Tours involving the city officials in charge of the project followed and they echoed Dodson’s assessment.

Dodson said even with buying the DD building for the $2.8 million the county wants and eating the $850,000 the city paid for a building it won’t be using, DD’s near move-in condition saves a net $6.3 million in the project. The FirstMerit building would be marketed through the Barberton Community Development Corporation and Main Street Barberton to “be put back into good use,” Dodson said, adding that anything the city gets from the sale would simply add onto that $6.3 million in savings.

In the new plan, the use of the old city building remains unchanged and those plans are continuing, the only change being the addition of a third bay to the police sally port, dropped due to cost in the old plan, and more storage space. Parks and the Active Adult Center will stay put at the YMCA, with all other offices moving to the DD building.

On the downside, since this substantially reduces the cost of the project, it means yet another amendment to the city’s grant request to the Barberton Community Foundation.

Dodson suspects that since it is a reduction, the board will be on board. It also means scrapping the drawings for the FirstMerit building and making new ones for the DD. The sale of the building needs approved by Summit County Council. All of this sets the move back, how much remains to be seen.

Barberton council’s Property and Parks Committee advanced legislation to go forward with the process of buying the DD building; it gets its first reading June 22.

In legislative action, council approved measures paying Civic Plus $38,118 for hosting the city’s website and $12,650 for jury services to the county.

Council also approved a resolution authorizing the mayor to partner with the Ohio Department of Transportation to resurface some roads downtown. This would repave W Tuscarawas Avenue from Wooster Road N to Eighth Street NW and W Lake Avenue from Wooster Road N to Sixth Street NW. The city’s share is covered by previously approved funding from the Akron Metropolitan Transit Study.

A change to the development code governing the placement of marijuana shops and cultivation got a first reading and was sent for another.

In additional committee action, a measure approving $6,000 to catch up the Parks Department’s registration software subscription was sent for readings, along with this year’s Community Development Block Grant plan.