Commissioners consider the future of Fernandina Beach's old City Hall?

By Mike Lednovich/Editor

At last Thursday’s strategic session, Fernandina Beach City Manager Sarah Campbell told city commissioners it's time to begin a long-range plan for the future of City Hall — outlining three potential paths and urging commissioners to authorize a feasibility study as the next step.

“It would be really cool to build new, but that’s a really expensive project,” Campbell said. “Maybe all we can tolerate is a remodel and an addition. I don’t know, but I think we need to start the conversation so that in 10 to 15 years we’ve addressed it.”

Her comments came during a wide-ranging discussion of the City Hall campus, possible alternative sites, financing models and resilience requirements tied to updated sea-level rise projections.

Campbell said she recently met with a local architect to frame what she sees as the city’s options:

1. Renovate the existing City Hall building.

2. Acquire and remodel an existing city building.

3. Pursue new construction.

“When I talked to the architect about those options, he agreed that those were the options,” Campbell told commissioners.

However, she emphasized that the city lacks a clear understanding of its future space needs — a prerequisite for evaluating any of the three paths.

“A feasibility study is really the next step because while we understand what is in City Hall right now, what we don’t have an understanding of is what needs to be in City Hall,” she said.

Campbell described the current City Hall layout as fragmented and inefficient, separating departments and leadership across different locations.

Some city departments are located in the Peck Center, a cause of concern on different fronts.

“The fact that the finance department, the legal department is not where the leadership of the organization is based, I think there’s a good argument for IT and code enforcement to be closer to their teams as well,” she said.

She added that departments often feel isolated because of their physical placement.

“It doesn’t matter what department you are in the city, at some point or another they have all felt like the redheaded stepchild because of where they are physically located,” Campbell said. “Everybody feels siloed at some point or another because of how the space is functioning.”

Public access in the downtown City Hall is also problematic, she said, particularly at the main entry counter.

“Their physical space that they have to stand in is the main entry to the (City Hall) building,” Campbell said. “So, people are constantly, ‘Oh, excuse me, pardon me, I have to go through you.’ You’re there to do business and you don’t have the space to do that because you’re standing in the main hallway of City Hall.”

During commission meetings, she said, acoustics and circulation issues compound the problem.

“When we have a meeting in the commission chambers, it’s very difficult to hear because there’s business being conducted on either side,” she said. “We’re sending customers through the building when there’s a meeting going on in the room.”

Campbell also highlighted strategic land holdings surrounding the current campus.

“One of the reasons it is interesting strategically is because we own the parcel to the north — Parking Lot E — and we also own the triangular piece to the west that separates it from the rail line,” she said. “Assembled, I can’t remember what the total acreage is, but it puts three parcels together into a larger footprint.”

Those parcels could factor into long-term redevelopment planning.

The city owns the property outlined in red and could possibly buy the parcel in green to build a new city hall campus.

Commissioner Genece Minshew asked whether the former post office building — a site periodically discussed in past years — remains under consideration.

Campbell said it does, along with two other properties.

“The post office, the Peck Center, the school board administrative offices, if they were to ever relocate, all three of those facilities, I think, have potential that would need to be studied,” she said.

Efforts to gain access to the post office have so far been unsuccessful.

City lobbyist Buddy Jacobs has lobbied the Federal government for years seeking a deal for the city to purchase the downtown post office that is nearly vacant. He's been told the building is not available.

“We attempted to gain access to the post office, but the Postmaster General shut that down,” Campbell said, noting limited postal operations are still being conducted there.

She said historic floor plans suggest the building could function well as a meeting space.

“I’ve looked at the historic floor plans. I think it would be an incredible commission meeting room,” Campbell said. “I’m just not sure if there’s enough other space to support city offices or growing city offices more than what we have.”

Commissioner Tim Poynter suggested exploring a capital-lease-to-own model as a potential financing mechanism if the city opts for new construction.

“They’ll say, ‘We’ll build it, you pay us X amount of dollars every year in rent, and that goes towards the first price. At the end of 30 years or whenever, you own it for a dollar,’” Poynter said.

“There are people out there who have a lot of money that are just looking for a reasonable return,” he added. “These governments are a pretty sure thing that they’re going to pay the bill.”

Under such a structure, private investors would front construction costs in exchange for stable, government-backed lease payments — with ownership transferring to the city at the end of the term. Summary of City Hall Campus Plan

Commissioner Joyce Tuten stressed that any future facility must meet heightened resilience standards.

“If a new building is considered, it absolutely has to be out of the floodplain, and not just up on stilts out of the floodplain,” Tuten said.

She added that any feasibility study must incorporate updated climate data.

“All of our future plans … use the new updated 2022 sea level rise data, not the 2017 data.”

Campbell agreed that resilience must be evaluated at the site level, not just through renovation strategies. Summary of City Hall Campus Plan

While no formal direction was given at the session, Campbell framed the issue as one requiring early planning to avoid reactive decision-making later.

“I’m newer to this conversation,” she said, acknowledging prior discussions and preliminary plans in years past. But she urged commissioners to begin now.

The goal, she said, is to “start the conversation so that in 10 to 15 years we’ve addressed it” — whether that results in renovation, relocation, or a new City Hall built outside the floodplain and financed through traditional or innovative means.