After years of careful planning, the completely new Royal Palm Beach Village Hall opened this month, and employees have spent the past two weeks settling into their new surroundings.
The first day of operations at the new building was Monday, Aug. 14, and Village Manager Ray Liggins said that the process went as efficiently as can be expected.
“I think it went really smoothly,” he told the Town-Crier. “We closed down on Friday, Aug. 11, and everyone was responsible for packing their own boxes. The movers came in on Friday morning and were done by 3 p.m. By the end of the day Monday, we looked pretty much moved in.”
The new 25,000-square-foot, two-story building replaces a structure that dates back to 1977, although it was previously renovated and enlarged several times. The new building is built to hurricane-rated standards and is nearly twice the size of the old building.
“Everyone is generally pleased with the new facility,” Liggins said. “Everything is new and fresh. There is one lobby, not two lobbies, where people have to go back outside to go it. Everyone likes that. There’s more logic to where people go. We worked with all the employees from the very beginning so we could accommodate everyone’s concerns or requests. It was important that we get it right.”
In the new space, access to village departments surround a large open space, with offices and meeting rooms for staff on the second floor. At the far end of the atrium is the new council chambers.
“The plan is that for the Sept. 21 meeting, we should be doing it in the new council chambers,” Liggins said. “There’s about two weeks of work still to do there.”
Just because the staff is in the new building doesn’t mean the work is done. The focus now shifts to the outside campus area.
“The area where the old building is will be torn down, and that area in the front will be rebuilt with parking and a reflective fountain. That will take six months,” Liggins said. “Then, we will convert the old council chambers into a rental space for about 75 people.”
While the village staff is still working on a few odds and ends when it comes to computers and data in the old building, the demolition will begin soon.
“We wrote the contract that we had a month to move in,” Liggins said. “The plan is that they will start taking it down about the middle of September.”
Still to come with the new building is a post office annex.
“The post office still needs to build out their area and move in,” Liggins noted.
Liggins is excited that this important upgrade to village services is nearing completion.
“When the whole site is done, with the front parking area, and the new rental space, I think it will be a campus that the residents should be very proud of,” he said.
