A new Home for City Hall

Remember when City Hall was supposed to move back downtown in the old city hall building partially renovated with Historic Preservation funds. Well that plan collapsed, the City of Apalachicola applied for the additional grants needed to complete the renovation, but never received the additional funds.

In the interim, I have started a dialogue with the Franklin County School District and should all turn out well, City Hall may have a new home in the Chapman Elementary School building. This past Thursday, August 7, 2008, I met with JoAnn Gander, Superintendent of Schools and Mike Clark, Assistant Superintendent to discuss the possibility. In attendance at that meeting were Lee Mathes, City Clerk, Joe Taylor, President of Chamber of Commerce, and Alan Pierce, Franklin County Director of Administrative Services.


We discussed a variety of topics, however, the main topic centered around the City of Apalachicola having an opportunity to utilize a portion of Chapman Elementary School and the Gymnasium now that the new consolidated high school is ready for occupancy.

In exchange for the city paying the utility cost on one of the classroom pods to serve as Project Impacts Apalachicola site for their after school program. I proposed that the city have access to the two front offices and the two front classroom pods to relocate City Hall from the Battery Park Community Center. Each pod consists of at least five to six classrooms that the city could use for municipal offices, with the gymnasium serving as a youth center or for other community programs. We further discussed the possibility of combining the afterschool program, which serves approximately 150 kids with the City of Apalachicola newly created History, Culture, and Arts program.

City staff is now in the process of drafting a formal proposal for the City Commission to consider before submitting it to the school district for consideration.