Rossland city staff are moving to their new headquarters this week.
Mayor Andy Morel said some senior staff are already in the new Rossland Yards building at 1920 Third Ave., setting up their offices, while the rest will move in at the end of the week. Heavy furniture is being taken from the temporary city hall to the new one this weekend.
The city’s offices will be closed on Monday and Tuesday and will reopen at the new location next Wednesday at 9 a.m. The city’s phone lines will still work during the transition.
This Monday’s council meeting will be the last one at the Miners’ Hall. Starting Nov. 6, meetings will be in the new council chambers. The new city hall is on the ground floor of Rossland Yards, which has three floors of workforce housing above it. Residents started moving in on Oct. 1. A date for a grand opening has not yet been set.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Morel said. “To be sitting on council for the last eight years and see this whole project come together has been exciting. I think it’s a real asset to our community and something we can all be proud of.”
Morel said the building remains “very close” to budget, but is well behind schedule. Originally they were hoping to move in the spring.
The new building will be the city’s fifth or sixth place of business since it incorporated in 1897 depending on how you count them. The original city hall was near the Miners’ Hall but city offices moved in 1901 to what’s now the old fire hall on First Avenue. There they remained until 1987 when the city bought a former medical clinic at 1899 Columbia Ave.
A partial roof collapse in March 2018 forced the city to relocate temporarily to the Miners’ Hall and soon afterward to 2196 Leroi Ave., where business has been conducted ever since. The latter building was formerly home to the Kootenay Association for Science and Technology and is now owned by the Columbia Basin Trust.
Morel said the roof incident just hastened a decision a decision on city hall’s future. At the time, renovations had begun to split some offices into smaller spaces.
“Space was at a premium back then and has definitely been a premium in our temporary city hall with a number of people sharing offices on two floors, which is a bit of a challenge,” he said, adding the new city hall “is bigger and it’s better.”
