Grand Prairie's concrete-bunker-style City Hall was built a block north of Main Street hidden behind the old City Hall and an ugly fountain, in 1974. The council chambers were renovated in 2012.
The current Grand Prairie City Hall is part of a much larger city government complex that fills FOUR city blocks. The 90,000 square foot city hall is the subject of a 2011 master plan to reimagine and redesign the city hall complex into more of a campus, with more greenspace and not so much concrete.
The City Hall itself will transition into a central anchor for the complex, instead blending into the landscape (as it does now). The current City Hall was moved off of Main Street, hidden behind a huge boxy fountain and obscured by non-native to the area loblolly pine trees.
The present City Hall is a 1-story flat-roofline building with large pressed concrete panels for decoration and a thick concrete top that overhands the sides of City Hall. The building looks like a heavy flat table -- it even has square supports at the corners where the massive building has had squares cut out for what feels like an underground entry.
There are almost no windows. The only ones we saw were around the dark, deeply-recessed doors. The whole building has a heavy, oppressive feel like a bunker. It's an awful vibe, not an attractive or welcoming place at all.
From the Grand Prairie Reporter: (
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"City Unveils Master Plan for City Hall Campus
Council Members were briefed Tuesday on the recently completed master plan that redesigns the City Hall campus.
The study looked at forecasted building and space needs in five to seven years and a twenty year outlook.
“We felt like we needed a master plan for our facilities just like we have a master plan for other things,” City Manager Tom Hart said.
Andy White, Assistant to the City Manager, said the study evaluated the current City Hall complex that includes seven buildings in a four block area with 90 thousand square-feet of space. Some of the buildings are more than sixty-years old and have areas not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Excluded from the study were the Municipal Courts Building, Public Safety Training Center and the Housing office.
The plan calls for a new, three-story, City Hall in a redesigned, open campus with will give visitors “one awesome Uptown experience,” White said.
The proposed City Hall would double office space to 185 thousand square-feet, put city services in one building, be more convenient for customers and employees, provide more parking, and be more efficient. Included in the campus redesign is a new four bay fire station.
Although Grand Prairie is in better financial shape than many cities, there is no money available in the city’s budget to cover the $95 million to build the project, Hart said. “There is no funding I can envision anytime soon.”
But, with the plan he said, at least the city has a road map for twenty years ahead when the population is projected to soar to 250,000." [end]
Mama Blaster's mother grew up in Grand Prairie in the 1950s and graduated from Grand Prairie High School. MB's granddaddy Roy Holmes worked at LTV/Vought Aircraft from 1950 until he retired in 1971. In a lof of ways GP does seem stuck in the 1950s, with lots of cool googie architecture and vintage buildings.
But this City Hall is way out of character with the charming look of other parts of town -- the very definition of self-inflicted Oppressive Municipal Ugly.
This town deserves better, and if they'll build the master plan, with the new City Hall (lots of windows, 3-stories tall, with a 4-story central tower) they'll get it.