Engineering department staffer Forrest Steinkoff helps pack office materials for the move next week to the FM Center.
By the end of October, most of the Moorhead departments now housed in City Hall will be relocated on floors 1, 5 and 7 of the FM Center — long known as the Frederick Martin Hotel and, later, US Bank.
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
Most of Moorhead’s city offices are on the move this month, as the city prepares for close inspection, design and, ultimately, top-to-bottom renovation of City Hall.
The white, five-story structure has looked down on the Center Mall since both debuted in 1973. But as the mall is demolished at its feet, City Hall is due for renovation and reinvention over the next two years. By 2026, it will stand alone at the head of an extended Fifth Street North, flanked with a public plaza to its west. The project is estimated to cost $20 million.
In the meantime, city employees will be spend the next 18 months to two years in new quarters on the other side of Center Avenue. The city has leased three floors of what was once the FM Hotel, later the home of US Bank, to temporarily house their offices on the first, fifth and seventh floors.
The odyssey will stretch out through October, according to assistant city manager Mike Rietz, who is in charge of the complex move.
“It’s loosely controlled chaos at this point,” Rietz says of preparations for the move, adding, “but there’s method to the madness.”
The engineering and community development departments are getting ready for their move to the top floor beginning Monday, Oct. 7. Along with all the equipment and furnishings currently in use, the shift required sorting and prioritizing decades of documents in storage in the City Hall basement. Essential records were separated from the recycling heap and digitized, making them both more convenient to access and a great deal easier to move.
Next come three departments that require a higher degree of security for their operations – the city prosecution, finance and IT departments. All three will relocate to the fifth floor, where access will be controlled.
The big news, Rietz notes, is coming on the ground floor. There, residents having business with the city will get a taste of the dramatic change planned for the reimagined City Hall: a customer service center, where the staff of the city clerk’s office will help with licenses and building permits or payments or special assessments.
“We’ll be able to do customer service better than just throwing people into an elevator to find their own way. We’ll meet and greet people downstairs,” he explains. “Rather than having to find their way the department they need, our personnel will come down to them and meet them in the conference room right inside the entryway. It’s basically what the concept will be when we move back to City Hall after the construction.”
About a dozen city staffers moved to the Hjemkomst Center earlier this year, including the city assessor, governmental affairs, communications and economic development. City manager Dan Mahli, administrative assistant Tara Nielsen and Mayor Shelly Carlson joined them in mid-September. They occupy the ground-floor space vacated last winter by the FM Chamber of Commerce.
The Moorhead Public Service Commission is moving, too, but to a separate location on Highway 10.
The City Council approved leasing the interim locations in what’s now being rebranded as the FM Center on Aug. 24. At the same time, they voted to hire McGough Construction as CMAR (construction manager at risk) for the first phase of City Hall remodeling. JLG Architects is handling planning and design of the project and the adjacent City Hall Plaza.
The city’s three-floor lease in the FM Center will cost $29,000 per month for the one year and 11 months of its term. Rietz says the veteran structure, constructed in the late 1940s and operated as the FM Hotel from 1950 to 1972, offered the right amount of space with the least remodeling required. “It hasn’t required much fit-up – just removing some doors. electrical work and securing certain areas,” the assistant city manager reports. “The biggest challenge of the move has been installing the cabling for IT.” He credits IT manager Corey Delorme with managing that project.
The relocation itself will proceed in stages. A commercial moving company has been engaged to move the furnishings, files and other equipment – first for engineering, then for departments headed for the fifth floor. The city clerk’s office is scheduled for the final phase, probably in the last days of October. By then, work on the new customer service center should also be ready to go. “Our facilities manager, Anthony Manzella, is coordination the whole process,” Rietz says. “He and Corey have done a terrific job.
After City Hall empties out, he suggests that architects and engineers will be able to take a closer look at what needs to stay or go in the 50-year-old building. One item on that list is sure to be the heating and air conditioning system. Many offices have already been using electrical space heaters on these early autumn days. “We haven’t wanted to put any more money into repairs than we absolutely have to,” the assistant manager points out.
He predicts that demolition of what’s left of the west wing of Center Mall – to be vacated by the Department of Motor Vehicles Oct. 18 – will likely take place after the first of the year. Downtown Chiropractic and Moorhead Vision Associates will continue to occupy the eastern end until both can move into the new buildings they are constructing sometime in 2025. The city has received a $1 million state grant to cover that stage of the removal.
Like any move, a transfer this big delivers its share of inconvenience and surprises, along with a not-inconsequential dose of uncertainty. Looking ahead, though, he confides, “I’m excited for what’s coming. I come to work every day looking forward to what’s going to happen next all around me.
“I’ll be the last one out of the building in November – me and the city clerk,” he predicts. “For now, I just roll with it.”
