St. Cloud City Council Votes to Move Forward on Tech High School Demolition and Renovation

(KNSI) — Bulldozers and excavators will soon occupy space on the grounds of Tech High School, once populated by students, staff, and faculty as the building is transformed into the new St. Cloud City Hall offices.

Monday night, the St. Cloud City Council voted unanimously to approve a multi-million dollar project that would demolish parts of the old Tech High School building to make way for the new City Hall offices.

St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis says the city is eager to move forward but had to do its due diligence.

“We are ready to go forward, and, of course, you know, it all had to change, so we put it on pause. And then we took it off pause a few months ago and bid it again. You never know what you’re going to get when you bid out projects, but we were right where we anticipated being.”

The project, which is estimated at $10.4 million, would take down the old, non-historic portions of the building and remove the asbestos and renovate two sections for use as City Hall.

Kleis explained that the city is committed to preserving its historical significance and wanted to make sure the project got the thumbs up before moving forward.

“The neighborhood’s still strongly supportive, most folks out here in the community are supportive of keeping the historical aspect of a high school that turns 105 next year. The school board has unanimously supported it, the council unanimously supported the move and it went through a very long public input process – over two years ago now, and so we’re ready to move forward. We’ll be closing this week we will be starting the demolition and renovation next month.”

What will become of the old city hall building remains to be seen, but Kleis says the city will make sure whoever moves into the old city hall is the right fit.

“We did a request for qualifications. There are three very interested parties that are qualified. Of course, then they have to further define what their package is and we’ll bring that to the council and get some direction as to which of those three is the project that’s going to be going forward.”

Kleis says the city is confident with the three candidates so far and expects competition for getting a good project at that corner. City officials plan to be in their new offices by the end of the year.

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