FLORENCE, AL (WAF) – Several city council members, city employees and the mayor met Monday to discuss a project for Florence’s new city hall.

Florence city leaders want to make sure they look at all options before actually deciding which city hall they want to see in the future.

Many different factors go into building a brand new city hall.

However, all officials could agree on one thing: There is a huge need for a new city hall. Now what they can’t agree on is the plan for City Hall that they’re all set to adopt.

Mainly because there just isn’t enough money in the budget. The city council has already approved the construction of a new city hall, but the price of the building has increased.

The original budget for a new city hall they voted on was $45 million. It was for a building and an attached parking lot.

Now, recalculating the costs, the building alone could cost more than $55 million.

Most city council members don’t want to borrow more money.

For now, the plan is to place the new city hall in the area where the old downtown parking lot currently sits.

It would be a six-story building. However, it can be reduced if the cost needs to be reduced.

They have thought about renovation, but the problem is that they won’t know the cost of renovations until they start the renovation, because they would have to bring the building up to code.

Four options were widely discussed.

Option one: They implement the new $55.5 million, six-story plan.

Second option: they remove several floors and then renovate part of city hall.

Third option: Take off one floor out of the six floors,

Option Four: They reduce the square footage of the building and reduce the number of stories to three.

For the moment, nothing is really set in stone yet. Florence officials want to look at their options and discuss them before making a decision.

They will vote on whether or not to demolish the old parking lot at the next city council meeting.

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