City Hall Overhaul Is Going to Cost Plenty

Plans to renovate and repair the City Council half of City Hall, which is divided between the Council and the Mayor's offices, are proving to be so complicated and expensive that the project has already been handed from one city agency to another and the cost estimates are ballooning. The Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services, which oversees City buildings, deferred to the Dept. of Design and Construction when it realized how complex the renovation of the more-than-two-centuries-old building was going to be.

Mayor Bloomberg and his staff temporarily relocated to Brooklyn for two weeks last summer as carpets were replaced, new paint was applied, and wiring was improved in his offices, or "bullpen." The City Council half of City Hall is in need of significantly more work and the estimated cost is currently at $65 million and rising. The New York Post quoted one source, "No one even knows how much it's going to cost."

The present City Hall was conceived in 1802 and completed in 1812, under the design of John McComb Jr. and Joseph F. Mangin. The last thorough renovation of the building's interior was conducted between 1907 and 1918. Some repairs had to be made to the exterior in 1858 when the cupola, dome, and rotunda were damaged in a fire set off by fireworks to celebrate the demonstration of a transatlantic cable.

Slide 3 - City Hall NYC, by bill leahy at flickr [reversed]