Green Park city officials have decided to move City Hall — but not very far.

The Board of Aldermen recently approved an ordinance authorizing Mayor Bob Reinagel to execute a five-year lease agreement with the owner of the Green Park Professional Building, 11100 Mueller Road, for two suites with total space of 5,041 square feet.

The Green Park City Hall currently occupies Suites 2 and 3 — 2,540 square feet — of the same building. The new City Hall will occupy Suites 5 and 6 of the Green Park Professional Building, nearly double the amount of space.

The city currently pays $15 per square foot for Suites 2 and 3 — $38,100 per year. Under the new lease, the city will pay $14 per square foot — $70,570 per year.

During a discussion of the ordinance, Reinagel noted more space is needed at City Hall.

“… As we look at this space, we all know that we’re out of storage back here … We just have no more room for storage. So we need more room for storage,” the mayor said. “We’d like to improve the community room to give people more access. There is a suite down there that has a kitchen in the back that would allow our citizens a heck of a lot more, I guess you would call it versatility as far as what they want to do.

“There’s also a suite back there that has a generator, a natural-gas generator, electric, that would allow us to take, if we did this, and turn City Hall into an emergency shelter for all our folks here in Green Park. So there’s an awful lot of pluses to this …”

City Administrator/City Clerk Zella Pope said, “… The generator there is for Suites 5 and 6. So I think that would be a great asset for our City Hall to have the generator in case of a power outage in the city or some kind of disaster …”

The city’s lease for Suites 2 and 3 ends in 2014, Reinagel said.

“… The lease that was signed allows a renewal at an increase over the last five years … well, it would bring the square-foot price to $18.76 a square foot instead of $15, which is prohibitive,” he said. “So in talking to Ruby O’Driscoll, the owner of this building, we can move to those two suites for $14 a square foot, which lowers the price by a buck a square foot over what we have right now …”

Board of Aldermen President Fred Baras of Ward 3 asked about the cost of renovations to the two suites.

Reinagel and Pope said O’Driscoll has agreed to paint all the existing walls and install new carpet not to exceed $9,500.

The city would be responsible for any interior renovations. Pope estimated the cost of those renovations at less than $20,000 for both suites.

Regarding the renovations, Reinagel said, “… We don’t have to do it all at one time. Some of the stuff we should do at one time as we go in, like the electrical and moving a light or two to accomplish things because it will be much cheaper when we do it that way. But we can take it in stages or we can do the whole thing if we decide to take this lease …”

Regarding the time frame, Pope said, “… We’re looking at a target date of Aug. 1 of being in there.”

Reinagel termed that estimate “realistic.”