Brookhaven will enter into contract negotiations for the design of its new City Hall.
The city finalized an agreement to build its new City Hall at the Brookhaven/Oglethorpe MARTA Station at a June 14 Brookhaven City Council meeting. Brookhaven’s current City Hall is a rental space at 4362 Peachtree Road NE. Finding a new location for City Hall is one of the aspects of the city’s “City Centre Master Plan,” which is meant to create a framework for a possible downtown area and guide future development in the commercial area along Peachtree Road.
At a July 26 council meeting, City Manager Christian Sigman said that the city has already been using a firm called the Sizemore Group for space planning on the City Hall project. The council opted to move forward with negotiations with the Sizemore Group for architecture and engineering rather than going through a bidding process with other firms.
Councilmember John Funny spoke very highly of the firm. He requested that the city move forward with the Sizemore Group, and requested that Sizemore and the city host a robust public input process for the City Hall project.
“This is the people’s building,” he said.
Funny also requested that once the agreement is finalized, representatives from Sizemore come before the council and give a presentation on their vision for the project.
Councilmember Linley Jones was the only council member who voted against the motion.
“I’m sure that Sizemore may be very capable of doing a very good job, and I am optimistic about that,” she said. “But because they have not been vetted through an RFQ process and because bids were not accepted from multiple contractors who might have wanted the opportunity … I can’t support their approval without a public bidding process.”