BEVERLY — The City Council Tuesday night approved $28 million to renovate City Hall.
Despite a lengthy debate, the council did not vote on the measure until late in the evening. The nine-member council approved the first major renovation of City Hall since 1935 on a 7-2 vote.
The city plans to start construction at the end of September and wrap up work in early 2028, with staff to return in March of that year.
The money Mayor Mike Cahill sought Tuesday night included the costs of temporarily moving city offices.
“A healthy, well-managed community needs to maintain, improve and replace its assets on a schedule,” Cahill said Tuesday. “It needs to issue debt, make regular payments to service and eventually retire that debt, and then issue new debt for the next capital project.”
The city appropriated $1.5 million in March of 2022 to hire a project manager and architectural design firm, conduct a feasibility study and needs-assessment work, and create a schematic design.
As part of the project, workers will demolish the former police station annex that is connected to City Hall to make way for a new, two-story building to go up on the annex’s existing foundation.
They will add a second Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant building entrance from the parking lot — along with making the whole building ADA compliant — as well as install a second elevator in City Hall.
The project will bring three departments back to City Hall, including the Health Department, which currently uses space at the city’s Senior Center.
It will increase the building’s number of meeting rooms from two to seven, create 14 single-use bathrooms that are all ADA accessible, add a dedicated mother’s room for the first time, and create four private rooms where staff can take phone or video calls.
The project will also replace what Cahill called a “very substandard” HVAC system that’s currently in the building with electric heating and cooling systems. There will also be a climate-controlled storage space in the basement of the former police station annex for department files.
This work will make City Hall’s size comparable to the new police station that went up at the Cummings Center eight years ago. Cahill noted the police station’s $29 million budget then is similar to what is proposed for City Hall now.
The building is in great need of an overhaul, said David Lightman, an architect with the firm Finegold Alexander Architects Inc.
Not every floor has meeting spaces or bathrooms. The building has a failing boiler and partially failing HVAC system. There is no fire suppression system, and there are rotting beams in the floor structure, among other issues, Lightman said.
The city’s budget analyst, Jerry Perry, was favorable toward the project budget and said the city has prepared over the last several years to take on this debt. He also noted the project does not require a debt exclusion override, which is unusual for a project of this size.
“Most of the other communities that I’ve worked with over the years, almost invariably have to go for that debt exclusion,” Perry said Tuesday. “It shows that the administration, working with the City Council, has done a great job, in my opinion as your budget analyst, planning for the future.”
Resident Rick Marciano questioned at a public hearing before Tuesday’s vote why the city would agree to take on this debt when it is facing a deficit in funding the Fiscal Year 2027 budget.
Ward 4 Councilor Scott Houseman said this is a matter of “whether the cost of regular maintenance should be considered a fundamental part of a sustainable budget.
“Like not changing the oil in your car, you can get away with not doing regular maintenance for a while, but in the long run, it will have bad consequences,” Houseman said Tuesday.
Ward 6 Councilor Matt St. Hilaire said he took issue with the city zeroing out a line item for road and sidewalk maintenance in last year’s budget, then seeking to dedicate $2 million from the budget to this project.
“It seems like we’re not in the right place there,” St. Hilaire said.
Cahill also shared updates on other city projects Tuesday night.
Staff will move into the new McPherson Youth Center by mid-March with a dedication ceremony expected for April, Cahill said.
A $2.2 million project is underway to repair the roof and HVAC system of the main branch of the Beverly Public Library on Essex Street. Work is expected to be completed in June, and comes after a Council proposal failed to totally replace the 30-year-old system and conduct other repairs to the library when plans ballooned from a cost of just over $3 million to $18 million in 2024.
A water meter replacement project in the city has so far seen 250 of these meters replaced, Cahill said. The number of workers installing these meters will go up from one to four beginning in February, and a completion date is set for summer 2027.
The city has added rapid flashing beacons at five crosswalks with high rates of pedestrian traffic. They were installed on Sohier Road in front of the high school, at Brimbal Avenue and Palmer Road, at Dodge and Putnam streets, at Essex and Grove streets, and at McKay Street near Sturtevant Street.
A rotary will be built at the intersection of Brimbal Avenue and Dunham Road, with an 18-month construction period to begin early this summer. The $7.4 million project is fully state funded, Cahill said.
For the temporary bridge going up in Ryal Side following the closure of the Hall-Whitaker Bridge, an initial pier for that bridge has been completed and work has started on installing two more, Cahill said. The bridge is planned to open by the summer of 2027, though the city is working to accelerate the opening, he said.
Contact Caroline Enos at CEnos@northofboston.com .