Students chip in ideas for city hall

Published 11:09 pm Saturday, December 22, 2007

MARYSVILLE — When the city builds its new city hall in a year or two, the campus could have influence from an unlikely source: a group of students from Everett Community College.

The city hall could have an M-shaped facade, with rainwater flowing to the center of the roof to be collected for recycling into a fountain.

Or the new headquarters could become a complex of several buildings with gardens on the rooftops.

The city got a head start on its planned new campus recently by accepting help from a group of business and engineering students at EvCC.

The 21 students — most of whom had never done similar work before — broke into four groups of five or six apiece and in only five weeks came up with some detailed ideas for what could go into the permanent home the city hopes to start building as soon as a year from now.

The experience benefited both the city and the students, they said.

“It gave us some different insight we didn’t already have,” city administrator Mary Swenson said.

The students really threw themselves into the project, said their instructor, Catherine McHugh.

“That was the hardest I’ve ever seen a group of students work,” McHugh said.

Marysville hopes to begin building a new civic campus as soon as early 2009. The city’s government has lived a nomadic, divided existence in recent years. The current City Hall at 1049 State Ave. is a former office building the city has occupied since 2003. From 1997 to 2003, the city made its home at the former library on Grove Street.

The city also has offices for planning and public works at 80 Columbia Ave., police and fire services at 1635 Grove St. and parks and recreation in Jennings Park at 6915 Armar Road — and it is outgrowing all those places, officials said.

The new campus will likely be in either the Comeford Park area, where the city owns a lot of property, or near the site of the current planning and public works building, not far from Ebey Slough, Swenson said.

Two groups of students created designs for the Comeford Park area and the other two came up with designs for the more southerly location. Danielle Gross, 19, became the team leader for the latter group.

“I loved it. It was a lot of fun,” she said.

Earlier this year, the city approached the school of business design about some research it was doing on space for artists. While those discussions were taking place, EvCC teachers and officials learned that Marysville also was planning a new city campus.

“I thought, ‘Hmmm,’ ” said Lynne Munoz, director of the EvCC school of business design. “We always look for hands-on experiences for student projects with local businesses.”

She asked city officials if they’d give the students a shot at it, and they agreed. They’d get the input for free, and the students would get academic credit for their work.

Most of the students, ranging in age from 18 to their mid-40s, are first- or second-year college students, McHugh said. Some are in business design, which is primarily marketing, and some in engineering. The classes are sometimes combined to give students interdisciplinary experience in areas such as commercial building design, McHugh said. This class was titled “Innovation in Design.”

The students spent time in Marysville, talking to city employees and looking over the two areas. Gross, who lives in Arlington, said she welcomed the chance to learn about her neighboring city.

The students took photos and even spoke to people on the street to ask them what they would like to see in a city hall.

The students created drawings of the buildings, including floor plans, a cross section and a three-dimensional drawing. Then they combined the materials into a PowerPoint presentation to the city in early December. Each of the students had stand-up speaking time.

“They all dressed very professionally,” Swenson said. “They took it very seriously.”

New ideas for the city included an L-shaped layout in one of the designs, as well as the rooftop gardens. Mayor Dennis Kendall joked about having a putting green in his office.

The students also read the city’s mind in some other areas, including environmentally “green” design — most of the students included solar panels for heating — and, in the case of the Comeford Park site, a pedestrian walkway over Fourth Street and rail access to the campus.

The students’ input will save some time in dealing with whichever consultants ultimately do the design, officials said.

“We might be able to help them get to the end quicker,” Kendall said. “We might be able to cut out a step.”

On the students’ end, the endeavor provided valuable experience in teamwork, leadership and public speaking, “in terms of who did what and how they integrated different parts of the project together,” McHugh said.

“Every one of them has said it was an incredible learning experience, nothing they ever could have imagined.”

Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.