Houston-based program and organizational change managers Athenian Group has been tapped as the project manager for the new City Hall and the programming-related moves and improvements to several other city-owned buildings.
The group will evaluate the future of the new City Hall’s office space utilization, programming functions for the new City Hall and nine other city-owned buildings, including assessment of the city’s leased spaces for possible cost savings. They will also determine workplace improvement plans at the new City Hall and construction of a new Council chamber.
Athenian is a Business Equity professional services firm that is Minority Business Enterprise-certified in Houston and is in the final stages of reciprocal certification in the Fort Worth market area. On this venture, the company has teamed up with Intelitrac, a Fort Worth-based government contracting firm, to help drive efficient building standards and overall community expertise.
City staff put out a request for qualifications in December 2020 for a professional project management team. The RFQ was advertised and forwarded to various consulting firms, Business Equity firms and interested parties, both locally and nationally. In February, the city received proposals from 16 consultant teams.
A selection team -- comprised of members from the City Manager’s Office, the City Hall Steering Committee, Property Management Department and the Diversity & Inclusion Department’s Business Equity Office -- reviewed the proposals and selected four firms to interview. Based on the qualifications and interviews, the selection team ranked Athenian at the top of the pack.
The Athenian team has extensive experience that makes them highly qualified for this project, including leading consolidation of the City of Seattle’s city-owned buildings into an existing 62-story downtown office tower and unifying the City of Houston’s public-facing services into the Houston Permitting Center, as well as a similar evaluation of Houston’s City Hall offices. Additionally, they have carried out other sizable consolidation, relocation and council chamber programming efforts for such clients as Los Angeles County.
Currently, the 10 city buildings to be programmed include:
- New City Hall at 100 Energy Way (former Pier 1 headquarters).
- Current City Hall on Texas Street.
- Public Safety Building on Throckmorton Street.
- Gordon Swift Building on Monroe Street.
- Municipal Annex on Monroe Street.
- Taylor Street Garage.
- Zipper Building on West 13th Street.
- 13th Street Annex.
- Business Assistance Center on South Freeway.
- Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods on Missouri Avenue.
The programming effort will aim to consolidate city functions, promote collaboration and innovation, reduce city leasing costs in other buildings and evaluate buildings for potential sale.
