City Hall design competiton narrowed to four architects

The list of potential architectural firms that may design a new City Hall for Whitefish has been narrowed to four.

The future city hall steering committee Sept. 10 voted to approve a short list of firms being considered from the 10 that submitted responses to a request for qualifications.

The firms selected are CTA Architects and Engineers of Kalispell; MacArthur, Means & Wells Architects of Missoula; Mosaic Architecture-Planning of Helena; and OZ Architects/John Constenius of Missoula and Whitefish.

The committee, which is made up of residents, representatives from the business community and City Hall staff, ranked the prospective firms and then chose four based on those rankings to move to the next round of the selection process.

Eventually the committee expects to make a recommendation to the City Council for final selection. This spring City Council approved a new City Hall to be constructed at its current site along with an attached parking structure.

The architect selected will be working alongside the city’s parking consultant Kimley-Horn and Associates to create the parking structure portion of the building.

Firms that applied, but were not selected, include: Phillips Architecture, Montana Creative Architecture + Design, Montana Architects, Inc., Locati Architects, Collaborative Design Architects and Schutz Foss Architects.

The committee next plans to meet jointly with the firms so that the firms can gain an understanding of the vision and priorities for the new City Hall and parking structure.

Eventually the firms will be invited to an interview and subsequently asked to present conceptual or virtual models of their proposed design for the building during a design competition.

When these next steps take place is still uncertain.

City Council recently held its first meeting to discuss funding assessments that could cover the cost of operation and maintenance for the parking structure. Council is expected to discuss the matter again next month.