Bexley gets creative in moving its city hall

Redevelopment Helpful Links Headlines from ThisWeekNews.com The City Blog Local Stories from ThisWeek More Articles By Lori Kurtzman The Columbus Dispatch Saturday October 4, 2014 5:20 AM

The old bathroom dividers will become the new countertops. This is no joke. When Bexley moves city hall out of its soon-to-be-demolished building and into the strip mall next door, it will bring along the heavy gray marble slabs that once separated one mans business from anothers.

And people will put food on them.

I have been assured that they will be properly sanitized, said the mayors assistant, Debbie Maynard.

When the hallmark of your project is clever repurposing, this kind of thing happens.

By the end of January, the people who run Bexley will have cleared out of the 65-year-old building at 2242 E. Main St., which will then be demolished to make way for the much-anticipated, two-story Giant Eagle Market District Express.

City Hall is moving just a few yards away, to the back of the Bexley Square shopping center. It will fill up the space that once housed the beloved Bexley Monk restaurant, a $790,000 repurposing project that presented its own special challenges.

Well, (the mayor) told you about the smell, didnt he? said architect Andrew Rosenthal.

Grease. Overwhelming, dense, clinging-to-the-walls grease, the byproduct of years of frying and sauteing and baking. The grease stench was so entrenched that displacing it involved replacing some heating and cooling equipment, Rosenthal said.

The smell is gone now. So is the restaurants bar and all of the well-built features that made it distinctly a place to serve and eat food. Clearing it out proved harder than anticipated. In some cases where workers might have expected wood, they found concrete.

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Bexley gets creative in moving its city hall