City Hall Viability Study

City of West Lafayette

Preliminary Executive Summary

Pizzuti Solutions LLC entered into a contract with the West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission to
prepare a space program for a proposed New City Hall building and to identify and rank individual sites
as potential sites for such future City Hall building.

As part of our efforts numerous activities have been undertaken to advance these discussions. A
summary of such activities and the most current findings are included in this summary. Please keep in
mind that our efforts are not yet complete and that a final report will be submitted to the City in June.

Please accept the following as a bulleted summary of efforts completed to date and our most current
rankings of potential sites:

• To date our team has completed numerous interviews, surveys and discussions with staff
members, officials and other identified stake-holders to help determine current and future staff
projections, operational challenges with current space allocations and layout, potential
improvements in efficiencies and preferred adjacencies of City staff locations, and other general
concerns or preferences to determine an acceptable square footage of a new City Hall.

• An electronic community survey was created and distributed that requested public feedback on
items such as potential locations, potential uses and types of spaces within the building, and
other relevant information. Over 450 responses were received as part of this process.

• A public open house was hosted by the City to allow for citizens to consider and vote on
preferred locations as well as to consider preferences in building materiality and to review a
sampling of other city hall’s to foster open dialogue on what should be considered as part of a
new facility for West Lafayette residents.

• Utilizing a tool developed by Pizzuti, known as the Site Evaluation Matrix (SEM), numerous sites
were evaluated and scored based on unique criterion developed for West Lafayette. 45
individual elements were evaluated and scored to determine an over-all site rankling of those
sites evaluated. These elements were also weighted in accordance to those more key impacts
including site control/ownership, potential funding sources, per square foot cost of construction
and other such items. The scoring is based on a score ranging from -3 to +3, in addition every
scoring criterion is weighted (meaning that a value is assigned depending on how important that
particular criterion is to the community/stakeholders), the weighting ranges from 1 as the least
impactful to 10 as the most impactful or important. In this particular case with the West
Lafayette assigned criterion, the scoring range is between -396 to +396 points.
• Key take-aways from our work to date include the following preliminary results: City Hall space
requirements are approximately 16,000 sq. ft. not including any additional public or community
spaces and a parcel of approximately 1.5-2 acres in size.

• From a location standpoint three sites are currently considered the top finalist sites. The three
sites – and each of their scores – are as follows:

o The Morton Center with a score of 345 points

o Former City Hall site with a score of 230 points

o Site of proposed Rec Center with a score of 158 points

• Please keep in mind that the exhibits provided represent nothing more than a site fit and are a
work in progress and are used as a management tool to score the sites and demonstrate a
potential solution, they do not represent a specific design direction.