Assembly OKs relocating City Hall to Michael J. Burns Building; move expected to take at least a year
- Mark Sabbatini
- Sep 22
- 4 min read
City leaders vote 7-2 to authorize negotiation and purchase of two floors of building from the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp.
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Juneau is set to get a "new" City Hall after years of trying by its leaders.
The Juneau Assembly on Monday night voted 7-2 to authorize the negotiation and purchase of two floors of the Michael J. Burns Building from the Alaska Permanent Fund. Corp. The cost is expected to be $10.2 million for the office space and up to $7.7 million for a full refurbishment, with annual condo fees of $650,000 a year, according to City Manager Katie Koester.
"I would love to be in the Burns building in the next year," she told Assembly members Monday. "I think it will take a little bit longer than that."
Koester noted Monday’s meeting was taking place in Centennial Hall instead of the Assembly Chambers at City Hall because the building — originally built in 1951 and renovated in the 1970s — "is in ill repair."
"One of the reasons why we're not in City Hall at this moment is City Hall has lots of challenges and, more importantly, our leased space has lots of challenges," she said.
Relocating will cost the city about $35.3 million during the initial 20-year period, compared to the $43.7 million cost of remaining in the existing City Hall and continuing to lease space in nearby buildings, according to an estimate presented by Koester to Assembly members earlier this month. The lower two floors of the Burns building will house about 160 municipal employees working in multiple departments, plus a new Assembly Chambers for public meetings.
The dissenting votes were cast by Assembly Members Ella Adkison and Neil Steininger. Adkison said her concern is the move would permanently displace state government agencies that formerly occupied that space, thus reducing options for state office space if an increase in those workers occurs in the future.
"I also acknowledge, as I have before, that we don't have a better option at this point in time," she said. "So if this does pass, which I’m sure it will, I will be supportive of making it a good place for city staff to be."
The vote was a triumph for Assembly Member Wade Bryson, who said in an interview afterward "we just ended a five-year discussion of ‘What are we going to do for City Hall?’"
Still to be determined is the level of renovation to the office space and other details, Bryson said. Koester’s estimates are a "status quo" move to the Burns space as it is would cost about $1.5 million, a partial remodel with limited space configuration would cost about $4.5 million and a full remodel to desired city standards would be about $7.7 million.
Koester said city staff are still working on a request by Assembly members to provide more specifics about each of the three options.
Voters twice rejected bond measures — of $35 million in 2022 and $27 million in 2023 — to help fund a new City Hall. That prompted city leaders to take another look at existing buildings that had been previously rejected as less practical than a new facility — but Bryson and other advocates argued a purchase is far preferable to paying millions in rent annually for the indefinite future.
"When our children are meeting at the (future) Assembly Chambers hopefully that's something that has been paid for and owned, and we're not having to do rent indefinitely, like what we have set up right now," he said during Monday’s meeting. "And then I'm thinking even further down the road, 50 to 70 years down, when we still have the same City Hall in the same building that we own. The savings that would be provided to the city is incalculable."
Two people offered public testimony during Monday’s meeting — one opposing the move, the other expressing concern about losing employees as customers at downtown businesses.
Dave Hanna, a longtime Juneau resident and business owner, said the city should reassess how the property market has changed recently to determine if other sites are more suitable, and that continuing to rent should be considered a viable option since repairs should be performed by landlords.
Koester, in response to a question from an Assembly member about having a landlord do repairs, said that isn’t applicable to the Marine View Building where there are "a lot of challenges…because of how it was constructed."
An appeal for the Assembly to consider the impact of moving a large number of year-round employees away from the heart of downtown was made by Dezarae Arrowsun, owner of the Picture This framing shop located a couple of blocks away from the current City Hall. She said a new use for the existing building, or developing something new on the property, should be pursued quickly.
"We recognize that this is a hard decision, and we don't necessarily say that you should or shouldn't (move)," she said. "However, we just ask that you don't forget the businesses downtown. Especially in the winter, we do rely a lot on the staff that comes and goes to work."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
