Project leaders held the first community outreach event in October intended to inform design concepts for a new City Hall and police station.

During the event, the city and its Portland-based design architect, CIDA Inc., which was also hired to help redevelop the former elementary school into a tourist destination, discussed goals for the project and answered questions.

Leslie Jones, an associate architect with CIDA, said the more than 70-year-old building served as a building supply store before it became home to City Hall and the police station.

She said the new building, which will be constructed over the existing location on E. Gower Avenue, is central to the city’s midtown and could be an opportunity to enhance the area.

Some of the funding for the project will likely come from the 5% prepared food tax approved by voters last November.

Noting size and financial constraints, Jones said the goal is to improve working conditions, sustainability and safety.

“The new design will be designed as an essential facility, meaning that it will be designed to hold up in case of a seismic event or tsunami that is likely to occur,” she said. “So it will be designed for the most likely events, maybe not the most extreme.”

Jones and other representatives from CIDA said the ground floor of a new City Hall would likely not be usable after a medium tsunami, but that the second floor would remain a center where the city can conduct emergency management operations.

Many of the questions revolved around the city’s choice to rebuild in the tsunami inundation zone for a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.

The city considered rebuilding at its South Wind property, which is outside of the inundation zone, but concluded that it would significantly drive up the cost of the project, since the vacant 55-acre lot is tricky and expensive to develop.

Margo Lalich, a resident who served as Clatsop County’s interim public health director, urged the city to consider options that would allow a new building to endure a tsunami and provide recovery throughout the aftermath.

“When I think about tsunami and being in public health, which is a critical part of recovery after a tsunami, that it is absolutely essential that we invest our resources in making sure that this structure can endure a tsunami,” Lalich said.

“I just can’t imagine investing in a structure, which half of it may or may not be decimated by a tsunami. It just doesn’t make common sense to me. So I think there’s many lessons learned, certainly from other countries and tsunamis.”

Emergency Manager Rick Hudson said there is no place in the city that is not going to be victim to a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. He encouraged the community to think about other emergencies that are likely to occur, not just the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

“We’re not going to be able to make something that’s going to be able to withstand that huge Cascadia rip that’s going to be operational stand-alone and serve as a place for everybody to be in — it’s not going to happen.”

He said the city has been developing multiple tools and networks that will come into play and work together in the event of a large earthquake and tsunami.

“These questions need to be answered, and City Hall needs to be sustainable and has to survive as much as possible, but it can’t be the only the answer,” Hudson said. “It can’t be the only eggs in the basket. And that’s what I tell people up and down the coast is, you can’t just count on that one little thing working for you when you have such a catastrophic risk.”