Overview & Background
The Mahoney City Center Committee met on January 27, 2026.
At its January 13, 2026 meeting, the City Council asked the Mahoney City Center Committee to consider options to potentially reduce the cost of the project, since most Councilors did not support the $194M price tag associated with the recommended design. The options the City Council asked M3C to consider to potentially reduce the cost included: 1) Phasing the public safety and Mahoney parts of the project and 2) Mahoney design alternatives, including a "bare bones" approach.
Exploring Alternative Design Options & Project Phasing
The Committee learned that even a "bare bones" approach to a Mahoney renovation would be cost prohibitive. This is because a number of building code, life safety, and ADA accessibility requirements would be triggered in order to simply occupy the Mahoney building. Required work would include substantial and costly structural upgrades (see 15:50 in the video).
The Committee also learned that phasing the project over a few years would not significantly change the overall impact on taxpayers (see 11:02 in the video). The Public Safety and Mahoney projects would need to be phased by twenty+ years in order to see a significant change in the impact. Construction costs also increase over time, and any facilities not renovated in the near future will require significant financial investment to remain afloat
The Committee also expressed concern that many of the alternative options presented (for example, leaving the gym and theater unusable or not incorporating the library) do not meet the Guiding Principles they adopted for the project or meet the charge they were given by the City Council to guide "a transformation of the historic Mahoney site into a vibrant civic and cultural hub."
M3C Recommendation to the City Council
Because of the information above, the M3C voted to not recommend a “bare bones” approach and not recommend phasing the Mahoney and public safety parts of the project over a few years. The Committee also voted to request specific guidance from the City Council on how to move forward should Council not find the Committee’s recommendations acceptable.
Specifically, M3C will ask the City Council in February if they would like to expand the Committee’s charge, which is currently limited to the Mahoney City Center, to explore alternative options for consolidating city services and sequencing that prioritizes city facilities with the greatest needs (Police and Central Fire Stations). M3C will also ask the City Council to provide guidance on whether its work should include the preservation of the Mahoney building or not. (See the discussion beginning at 1:50 in the video).