How do you plunk down a brand-new City Hall into the heart of a downtown where many of the buildings date back to the mid-1800s?
In the city of Carver, you design a building that echoes the past — at least that's what locals decided to do.
The new $5 million City Hall, a large brick building set to open Aug. 26, is probably too fresh-looking for even an out-of-towner to mistake for a 19th-century structure. "Once the concrete dries, hopefully," joked Mayor Courtney Johnson.
But Carver residents and officials did not want a modern building that would stand out from its surroundings.
Roughly 25 blocks of downtown Carver, including about 90 structures — many faced with the distinctive buff-colored brick that Carver and neighboring Chaska were once known for producing from local clay — comprise a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. New construction or remodeling within that area first must be approved by the Heritage Preservation Commission.
When city officials learned in 2016 that their Village Hall had safety issues, they had to decide whether to repair, remodel or just start over. The 60-year-old building, used for local gatherings, and the adjacent 30-year old City Hall were not especially lovely or even well-suited to their functions.
So city officials and a local task force decided to tear them down and build a new municipal building on the same downtown location, once the site of a historic hotel.
Carver had many hotels back in the days when a stagecoach ride there would require an overnight stay, said John von Walter, a history buff and member of the Carver Heritage Preservation Commission. Before Minnesota became a state in 1858, the city was the destination for steamboats going up and down the Minnesota River delivering goods to and from around the world, he said.
