Prospect Heights' new city hall up and running

The smell of newness wafts through the Prospect Heights City Hall as workers put the finishing touches on the new building.

In a few weeks, the scent of glue and sawdust will be something of a distant memory for the city's nine employees. By then the staff of the building, designed in forest green and taupe, will have settled in. Construction crews will have finished their work, leaving the staff by themselves for the first time since employees began moving back into the building a few weeks ago.

For now, no one is complaining. It's far better than the tiny cubicles the crew used in the basement of the police station, about two blocks away from the city hall, which is located at 8 N. Elmhurst Road.

"I say it's functional, not ornate or over the top. But it's not antiseptic either," said Pam Arrigoni, city manager.

The $2.5 million building is on the same footprint of the old one, which was a retrofitted real estate office the city moved into about a decade ago.

While the building is almost identical, there are some significant changes, including a sprinkler system, which the old building didn't have. That omission cost the village its hall when an arsonist burned it down two years ago. The person who splattered the city hall with accelerant, lighting it aflame, still has not been caught. Fire insurance covered most of the rebuilding cost.

"It's unfortunate this happened," said former Mayor Rodney Pace, who was in charge when the building burned down. "It was either a prank, or a spiteful act. Either way, it was wrong."

Arrigoni notes it's a replacement building, but there had been improvements that wouldn't have been possible with out the opportunity of building new.

The council chambers, decorated with faux leather chairs, granite countertop on the dais and cherry wood, is a bigger version of its predecessor, which seated 45 people.

In this one, 69 people can sit in chestnut-colored chairs with a speckled finish and back lumbar supports for residents sitting pleasure. Another 10 people can stand along with walls. The dais for 16 people has been raised instead of being flush to the floor. It's a far cry from the folding tables with a tablecloth on top that were used in the old building. The room's also been reconfigured so the dais is on the right instead of dead ahead.

The audio visual room, with a one-way mirror, is just off the council chamber. It will be fitted with pan, tilt and zoom cameras, so meetings can be televised. While the 7-foot high black console for recording equipment on the countertop and the adjoining Samsung TV monitor might look expensive, they're not. A staff member, knowledgeable in communications equipment and decoration, went to Home Depot to buy supplies.

The city staff still has to sift through hundreds of brown cardboard boxes of documents salvaged and stored after the fire. While the boxes are marked, a salvage company stuffed the documents in them and sorting likely will be a paper-by-paper endeavor, which could take months.

On the bright side, the staff is looking forward to a grand opening party some time in the future, perhaps in September, Arrigoni said. The party won't go on until there been a bit of a spring cleaning.

"You want your dishes put away and your house cleaned before you have guests over," Arrigoni said.