Gillette, Wyo. – The City Council of Gillette approved a contract for $ 1,925,500 with Van Ewing Construction on Tuesday evening in order to carry out a thorough renovation project for Gillette City Hall.
According to the city, renovation work is required to improve the use and efficiency of all four floors of the town hall. According to a city memo, the project “aims to optimize the space, improve public interaction and to solve long-term infrastructure problems within the facility.”
“We have departments and departments that you have to take a few U-gymnastics to meet with various department lines and so on,” said Gillette City Administrator Mike Cole. “We also have some operational problems with several departments that overlap together and something like that.”
This renovation is part of a greater constant effort to modernize the building. In 2024, the city initially budgeted around 4,000,000 US dollars for HLK and indoor amplifiers. This phase includes moving and adding walls and offices as well as updating plumbing work, lighting, flooring and ceilings.
This phase touches every aspect and floor of the building, starting in the basement.
“Gillette Public Access has a number of smaller, older control rooms that are no longer needed,” said Cole. “We would like to open this and expand our studio from the point of view of space use. This improves some improvements for your production capacities in the basement.”
On the first floor, only part of the building is exposed to the conversion. According to Cole, the city's judicial department overlaps with the establishment of the city administrative court and is divided by city council areas, which means that the judicial staff must take some unpleasant routes for navigation through the building.
“We essentially separate access for the judges from the judiciary and then maintain the existing conference room,” said Cole.
On the second floor, the large cabin area in the engineering department is re -configured to create three to five private offices and replace outdated furniture.
In the lawyers and in the planning areas, a deputy law firm is relocated and a new office for planning managers is created to replace the very small current space. The GIS division is also completely moved to the third floor. The free GIS area on the second floor is devoted to public affairs and enables a storage cabinet for public event equipment to be enlarged.
A wall is removed between the entrance of the financial director and IT to consolidate it and the GIS employees on the third floor of the building. According to reports, efficiency improves because these departments are currently distributed over several levels.
“We want to switch off a wall in between, combine it and use it exclusively for it and GIS,” said Cole. “At the moment we have it and GIS in the basement, on the second floor and on the third floor, and most of them will consolidate this to the third floor. And then the financing is passed a little, but something is more logical than where they are from.”
Cole described the bid of 1,900,000 US dollars for this project as “cheap”.
“Our estimate was around 3 million US dollars. We should save some money for the original 4 million US dollars if you include the HLK and the architectural services,” said Cole. “The conversion not only moves walls and rests soils and color. It also contains a significant cost of wiring for our IT.”
Ultimately, the renovation is expected to significantly improve the customer experience for visitors to the town hall by optimizing navigation and access to various departments and managers is available. The application for approval was concluded with seven yeas.
The renovation is expected to begin around October 1, 2025 and will be estimated until December 2026, which extends into the winter months.
Other contracts
The city also approved some other contracts for upcoming city improvements.
For S&S Builders for upgrades to the pump station One Pumping station, a BID price of 4,954,720 US dollars was approved. This project aims to replace an older chlorga system with a safer sodium hypochlorite system for water disinfection and to create its own chlorine bleaching the city.
The city also approved a change in a contract for $ 58,617 with Steiner Thuesen for Contract Management and Construction Services in connection with the Shoshone Avenue project.
Further information can be found in the complete agenda of the city council on August 19, 2025.