The city of Gahanna has a new and much larger civic center location.
The facility will house the community's city hall, police department and senior center. The complex is located at 825 Tech Center Drive near Morrison Road, about 1.2 miles southeast of the old site on South Hamilton Road and Rocky Fork Drive South.
WOSU’s Debbie Holmes spoke with Gahanna Mayor Laurie Jadwin and Gahanna Police Chief Jeffrey Spence.
Debbie Holmes: Mayor Jadwin, what's your impression about the Civic Center compared to what you had before?
Mayor Laurie Jadwin: This new building really is night and day from the facilities that we were in. We've been in here now officially two weeks since we first began moving our departments in. The difference in the modern technology that this building offers, the space that it has, our old building was extremely cramped with no windows. Employees were literally working kind of in dark cubicles and in this space, they have room to spread out. We have floor to ceiling windows, a lot of daylighting, modern lighting. And again, the technological advances in this building are just so far above what we had before.
Debbie Holmes: So, tell me then how will this help the city operate better?
Mayor Laurie Jadwin: First, the ability to have all our staff along with police headquarters and the senior center in one building, we're already seeing the benefits of just the collaborative conversations and staff getting to know one another. You know, at the end of the day, we're a service organization and you want your team performing as one unit and having them have the ability to have those conversations where they can work together, where they know one another. Just the first two weeks we've been in here, we've already seen a significant increase in the engagement that they're having with one another. But that's really what this is about. When you can provide the people who are serving the residents with the tools and the resources they need to perform their jobs well, then all that does is improve the quality and delivery of services to our residents.
Debbie Holmes: How much larger is this place? And tell me some of the unique qualities about energy efficiency.
Mayor Laurie Jadwin: So, this building that we're in right now, the Gahanna Civic Center, is approximately 138,000 square feet. That's all three. Senior center, police headquarters, city hall combined. Previously, I can tell you, for example, our senior center has 116% more programmable space where we are now versus where we were before. The entire former senior center could fit just in the multi-purpose room that we have created here. So that creates more opportunities for expanded programming and activities for residents. Before when we had the senior center, you could do one, maybe one-and-a-half activities at a time. Now we are able to program up to five or six activities at one time. Our police headquarters, I think the previous building was built, renovated in ‘92. They were out of space the day that they moved in there. It was about 16,000 square feet.
Debbie Holmes: How much did it cost to renovate the building?
Mayor Laurie Jadwin: The overall cost, we paid $8.75 million for the existing building, and then our construction costs overall were $59.6 million. So really, you had asked me about the sustainability features of this building, just the fact that we purchased an existing building and repurposed it in and of itself was a sustainable feature of this building. Just saving the footprint and when the building was renovated, a lot of the debris was recycled as well. This building integrates. We have solar carports that not only serve as cover for our city and police vehicles, but generate solar power that will help to support the building. We upgraded all the windows to energy-efficiency windows, L. E. D. lighting. We have daylighting modern script. The screens come down in the afternoon to cool the building in the afternoon and make sure the energy efficiencies are being maximized.
Debbie Holmes: Chief Spence, how does this place improve police operations?
Chief Jeffrey Spence: When I was hired, we had 31 employees and today we have nearly 90. And policing has changed considerably since those early days in the 1990s. The technology, just the equipment that officers have these days, everything from radios and electronics and body-worn cameras and the investigative side, all the tools of modern policing have expanded.
Debbie Holmes: Now in this new location, you guys are kind of off the beaten path.
Chief Jeffrey Spence: Just to get out of our building was sometimes gridlock. Here we have multiple response options that are just not dependent on Hamilton Road.
