A series of public works buildings have been combined in the city of Manhattan, Kan., and public works director Rob Ott said the benefits are worth the large investment.

The new Robert K. Ott Municipal Services Facility, named as a surprise in honor of Ott, officially opened in February. The building boasts the departments of parks maintenance, public works, and utilities and specifically the offices of forestry, horticulture, park maintenance, locksmith, public works street, stormwater, fleet operations and mechanics, water distribution, sewer maintenance, utility locates and water meter. The only two public works divisions that aren’t in the new building are the traffic division, which got a new building less than 10 years ago, and engineering, which is housed at city hall.

The planning to bring the offices together at one location began during a feasibility study in 2016, at which, Ott explained, the city learned that buildings housing streets and fleet, utilities and parks and rec, weren’t even close to meeting minimum standards Degradation of the buildings meant the cost to repair them simply wasn’t in the capital improvements budget.

“The locations we were asking employees to work out of were, frankly, extremely dated. They were never originally designed for the functions and tasks at hand: They were very much cobbled together, and it was important to provide a professional image of the city so we could recruit and retain these employees and they wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring their kids and show them where they work. The other locations were pretty bad too and as a result, we were struggling with vacancies in a number of different positions within the city.”

To make matters worse, the offices were on opposite ends of town. The decision was made to pursue a combined facility and see if community members would be willing to help support it.

The Manhattan City Commission put it to the voters, and they agreed to institute a new city sales tax to help fund the new facility, along with a few other projects. The Economic Recovery and Relief 2023 Sales Tax was voted in to cover economic development, existing debts, and infrastructure at a rate of 0.5% local sales tax and took effect on Jan. 1. The 10-year tax coincides with the expiration of the Riley County Sales Tax.

 The sales tax covers about 32% of the project cost. The rest comes from the wastewater fund, which is paying 20%; the water fund, 20%; stormwater, 18%; special parks and recreation, 3%; and the special highway fund, which is paying 7% on 20-year bonds estimated on the Master Budget of $24.5 million.

Two of the three previous facilities have already been sold, but the other building has redevelopment happening in the area so the city is waiting to see if a particular development will purchase it. If all three buildings are sold, the city estimates it could yield $1.6 million to help cover the cost of the new joint maintenance facility.

The city looked at several properties inside and outside city limits for the 57,000-square-foot facility, a process that took years.

“The problem is, just finding that much acreage is difficult within the city limits. That much acreage also produces property tax and possibly sales tax. The last thing the commission wanted me to do is to take property off the property tax rolls, a property that was generating some sort of sales tax,” Ott said.

The location they found was a parcel of farmland near the wastewater treatment plant. It was outside city limits at the time, but the city annexed it. An additional difficulty was that the property was near a U.S. Army Corps levy, which comes with its own restrictions and requires additional coordination. But the site is just 2.8 miles from city hall and boasts quick access to U.S. 24, making an even faster commute to the heart of the city. For the community of 55,000 people, it was determined that the opportunities the consolidated facility would bring were worth the cost.

The new facility has allowed a number of divisions and departments to be recombined, Ott said.

“It provides for more opportunity for sharing of existing resources, whether that’s skid steers or mini backhoes. Not every division and department have those pieces of equipment,” he said. “It allows for collaboration when there are various projects in the community so that everyone kind of knows what’s going on, and they can have more face-to-face type meetings.”

It also means less travel on the city’s dime to get employees involved in those meetings to the same place.

Ott said city officials hope the building will last as long as 100 years and offer more coordinated responses for city public works. He would recommend that any city struggling in the same way consider taking the leap.

Manhattan officials visited other facilities they liked and explored the options, and then scaled the facility to the city’s needs.

“Sometimes communities are in good condition and are set up for the future, and sometimes they’re struggling. Every community is going to have different financial wherewithal. Just because this project was so large doesn’t mean that a smaller community can’t scale it down: It might take a long time, even years, but the process, I think, is definitely worth it because at the end, you end up with something that can serve your community for a very long time.”

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