SAHUARITA OPENS TOWN HALL: Employees start move into complex

Sahuarita’s new municipal complex partly opened up Monday with little fanfare and lots of last-minute bustle.

Outside, landscapers and construction workers continued working on striping lines in the street and parking lot and finishing up work on utility lines.

Major work also continued on the police department building, which will open in February.

Indoors, employees seemed to be dwarfed by the largely empty buildings, which are huge in comparison to the cramped modular buildings and rented space where the town staff worked until last week.

Employees and contractors were still wheeling in file cabinets and boxes of records Tuesday morning.

While nearly all staff had telephone and Internet service at 1 p.m. Monday, when the new Town Hall opened to the public, a few desks were not online, Communications Manager Barbara Dolan said.

Members of the public began finding their way to the new complex, as about a half-dozen residents and contractors visited the building safety department Monday afternoon.

And a dozen or so mostly sullen-faced defendants found their way to the municipal court on Tuesday, the first regularly scheduled day of court hearings at the new courthouse.

The courthouse features a lobby large enough for a security screening machine and for security guards to use hand-held metal detectors on visitors, a major improvement over the set-up at the rented space the municipal court used to occupy.

The courtroom itself is far larger, allowing more space between the seats and the bench.

Parks and Recreation Director Debbie Summers was still awaiting a computer in her new office Tuesday, but noted that the rest of her staff did not have to move from their offices in Anamax Park Recreation Center, so her department was online.

Smiling town clerk Sandra Olivas-Meranza said she was very pleased with the new quarters, and told Dolan she has been waiting 11 years for a new office to accommodate the town’s ever-expanding files and records.

Among last-minutes glitches: Several of the rest rooms lacked signs that read Men and Women, but Building Official Andy Kelley said those accessible to the public must be labeled, and so two pairs of rest rooms temporarily have signs that read Boys and Girls, Dolan said.

Three of the four buildings in the complex opened on Monday—the courthouse to the north, the administration building to the south, and additional town offices to the west.

The police department is to open the first week of February in the eastern building, the one closest to the Sahuarita Road entrance to the complex.

The southern administration building houses the Town Council chambers, which were empty Tuesday but are set to be occupied for the building’s first Town Council meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 14.

Town staff say the new chambers will provide more space and a better set-up for attendees than the council has had in the past at Anamax Park or at the Sahuarita school auditorium.

All current phone numbers at Town Hall beginning with the “822” prefix will remain the same. The new phone number for the Municipal Court is 344-7150.

Construction began in July 2006 on the municipal complex, which is a block south of Sahuarita Road about one mile east of Interstate 19.

The temporary Town Hall was off Sahuarita Road behind the post office, while the Police Department and Municipal Court buildings were in rented buildings off Duval Mine Road.

The civic plaza is expected to provide a location for town gatherings, festivals and special events.

Once all of the buildings are occupied, there will be a grand opening celebration from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 1, featuring food, tours of the buildings, music, children’s activities and a showcase of local nonprofit organizations.

For more information on the new Town Hall or grand opening celebration, contact Barbara Dolan, town communications manager, at 822-8814 or by e-mail at bdolan@ci.sahuarita.az.us.

pfranchine@sahuaritasun.com | 547-9738