Four years almost to the day when mold exiled it from its last and rickety home in what had been a school and the mayor’s mother’s appliance store before that, Bunnell government today dedicated its new, and this time presumably permanent, City Hall and police station on Commerce Parkway amid cheers of pride and even a few commemorative gunshots as the national flag rose over the nearly 3-acre property.
City offices have vacated their digs in a strip mall. The City Commission will no longer squat its meetings at the Government Services Building. And the Bunnell Police Department–authorized for 16 uniformed personnel, currently staffed with nine–has finally vacated its doublewide trailer, where it had been lodged since 2021.
Of course it was not just “another great day in Bunnell,” as City Manager Alvin Jackson’s trademark anthem goes. “Great morning! Great morning!” he proclaimed from the small lectern set in the parking lot in front of the L-shaped building. “Isn’t this a geat day? A great day in beautiful Bunnell, Florida, the best city in the country. And if you didn’t know it, today you’re actually standing, sitting in the center of the universe. Can’t you feel the energy and the sense of excitement in Bunnell?”
The dedicatory ceremony followed, starting of course with an ardently Christian prayer by the pastor from the First Baptist Church across the street, several speeches, the flag-raising, a heart-warming a capella rendition of the National Anthem by a trio of men, followed by tours of the chambers and the building, including, just this once, the police department.
“It’s going to be a beautiful facility to service the folks in Bunnell and surrounding areas that need to come in and talk with us and be part of the growth,” Robinson said. She wasn’t kidding: two days ago she was in the 3-2 majority of a split Commission that approved the 6,100-home Haw Creek Reserve development west and south of the city, a development that will increase the city’s population sixfold and may even make City Hall look quainter than intended.
Commissioner John Rogers told the crowd how the city coped over the years without a building of its own, how it borrowed space at its “big brother” the county’s building, and how the commission had “the intestinal fortitude” to borrow the $10 million necessary for a new City Hall and build it. The price was slightly more than that, including design. “We dreamed about it, and now here it is. I mean, to think about where we were just a decade ago,” Rogers said, thanking the crowd–a sizeable crowd of dozens that included several elected officials from around the county and even a congressman–“to help us celebrate this awesome day in the City of Bunnell.”
Tours began in the Commission Chamber, which struck some visitors as smaller than they expected: it would not have been large enough to contain all he people who turned up to Monday’s meeting (to oppose the development). But it’s still larger than Flagler Beach’s chamber, and that city has 5,000 people, compared to Bunnell’s 3,500 to 4,000.
It’s not just a meeting room. It’s rimmed by offices and that suspicious conference room. Among the officers is that of Brandi Sadauskas, the constituent services director for U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, who is there full-time and meets constituents by appointment.
The building is 17,843 square feet, 3,000 of it for the commission chamber, where public meetings are held, 9,100 square feet for the administrative offices, and 5,700 square feet for the Police Department. There are 61 parking spaces, including 15 for employees, in the back of the building, and six motorcycle spaces. There did not appear to be a bike rack, which in Bunnell–a city where the proportion of car-less people is not negligible–was surprising, as was the absence of an electric-car charging station.
But there is a memorial garden. Residents can buy a personalized brick and have it installed there. There is also a military monument bearing the insignias of the various military branches, each donated by local residents.
Police Chief Dave Brannon was clearly relieved to have a real headquarters. “We were very compacted in our temporary location,” he said of the double-trailer. “It gives us more room to store equipment, an area to provide training, to have meetings, an area for staff, and we included a little bit of extra room for future expansion.” The department doesn’t have to borrow interview rooms to question (or interrogate) suspects anymore, having its own now, a tiny square of a room, bare, with a table and chairs and an overhead camera that will document interactions.
Kenneth Stancil, a 32-year-old resident of Pine Street in Bunnell, who’s had his share of run-ins with the law for over 10 years, has the dubious distinction of being the inaugural interviewee in that room on Aug. 19, when he was arrested for burglary and petit theft.
If you’re into the trivia of it, the building is made up of 33 tilt-wall panels trucked in through 17 tractor-trailer trips. The crane that helped put them in place was so high that the contractor had to get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before proceeding, due to the Flagler County airport’s proximity. The building has 70 rooms, three conference rooms–including, curiously, a small conference room attached to the council chambers, hopefully not for unannounced secret meetings of the commission–eight bathrooms, 14 toilets, 18 sinks, no gold-plated faucets, 41 desks, 92 doors, 32 windows, 293 lights (all LED).
It’s not over for the ribbon-cuttings in Bunnell: next Friday, the city and the county mark the opening of the Commerce Parkway loop to U.S. 1, a project that got its ceremonial groundbreaking the same time that Bunnell’s City Hall did (see: “The Day Bunnell Shook with Groundbreakings: New City Hall, New Road, New Urban Horizon.”)
And in December, the county will mark the opening of the terribly maligned but Phoenix-like Nexus Center–the county’s south-branch library–within walking distance of City Hall, across the street from the Sheriff’s Operations Center.
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