File Photo The former Wells Fargo building now belongs to the City of Minot. The city council has hired an architect to begin the redesign into a city hall.

The purchase of the former Wells Fargo building for Minot’s new city hall officially took place Feb. 23, and on Monday, the Minot City Council selected JLG to perform the architectural services for the renovation.

City Engineer Lance Meyer said the intent is to complete a space needs analysis and other preliminary work this spring before getting into the design process this summer.

“We’d envision construction documents ready to go to the public bid probably sometime this fall,” he said.

Construction time is estimated at about a year, with the potential opening of the new city hall in early 2023.

The City of Minot last fall had approved spending $2.6 million to buy the building. After the purchase and other expenses already incurred, $5 million remains in the National Disaster Resilience Program from the $7.75 million allocated. That money will be put toward rehabilitation and retrofitting of the building.

The new location offers more space and will allow departments scattered in other buildings to become centralized while expanding available space for offices moving from the current city hall, which will be used by the Minot Police Department and municipal court. Central Dispatch will move to the new building.

Council member Stephan Podrygula stressed the importance of the council and community, as well as staff, having input in the building’s rehabilitation.

“Besides this being an important, expensive project is the fact that it’s going to be something that will be around here hopefully for 50 or 100 years,” he said. “This is a symbol of our community, a symbol of our municipal government, and we need to get this right. We can’t just see this as some sort of technical, architectural kind of thing. It stands for the community, and I think it’s important the entire community has some place in this and the council be actively involved.”

Six tenants currently occupy the building. They have the option to remain in the building at the current time.