A health service center for Lenexa city employees and their families will be moving to City Hall in 2025.
This follows the departure earlier this year of Park University’s satellite campus at Lenexa City Hall at City Center.
The city has now hired a design firm to help redesign the space for the LiveWell Health Center, which is currently housed at the city’s former city hall building.
At its meeting last week, the Lenexa City Council voted 5-0 to approve Finkle + Williams Architecture, a Lenexa-based architecture and engineering firm, to design LiveWell’s new location at Lenexa City Hall, as well as explore design options for the old city hall building. Councilmembers Joe Karlin and Bill Nicks were absent.
Todd Pelham, deputy city manager, said using the same firm for both projects helps with efficiency.
“The communication is just better when you have one firm that you’re dealing with, as you’re moving and you’re scheduling people, and ‘How do we make all of this puzzle kind of fit?'” he said.
Once LiveWell is out of the former city hall space, Pelham says, the city will more easily be able to decide what to do long term with that aging building.
LiveWell provides services to city employees, families
LiveWell Health Center has operated in the old city hall space at 87th Street Parkway and Monrovia Street for about 15 years, Pelham said.
It provides services to city employees and their families, including primary care, physical therapy, physical exams, lab draws, immunizations and behavioral health services. It is operated by Marathon Health.
In July 2017, Lenexa City Hall moved to Lenexa City Center, about three miles west on 87th Street Parkway from its former location.
While other city services moved from the old space to the new one, LiveWell Health Center and the city’s information technology department stayed in the former city hall building.
In addition, the Lenexa Fire Department relocated Fire Station #6 to the former city hall building in 2020.
The move will redesign the old Park University space
Formerly located on the second floor of the current Lenexa City Hall building since it opened, Park University notified the city earlier this year that it would not be renewing its lease.
“We had a great relationship with Park University,” Pelham said. “They were a great tenant and they were able to, in a sense, help with the capital cost that the city took on when they built City Hall. So it was a real positive.”
As part of the project, Finkle + Williams Architecture will redesign the old Park University space, turning the college’s old classrooms and private offices into exam rooms and a lobby for LiveWell.
The move is part of next steps for old city hall
Moving the health center to the current city hall will help consolidate services into one location, Pelham said.
“It’s a little more of a central location, not only for our employees, but their spouses and kids,” he said. “It’s a convenience factor but also an efficiency factor — being close to our employee population. They’re not on the road as much, and they’re just closer to their health care provider.”
Moving LiveWell out of the old city hall space will also help the city determine what the next steps will be for that building, too.
“Right now, (there’s) this puzzle that we’re trying to solve,” Pelham said. “We really need to get the functions that are currently in the old city hall out of there, so that we have the ability to have a clean slate, to make this determination whether we’ll utilize any of the old city hall for the fire station going forward. Or (we’ll) completely demolish the entire building so that we have a clean slate to build the fire station as it should be.”
What’s next
It will take about a year to redesign the old Park University space and move LiveWell in, Pelham said.
“I think probably by this time next year (LiveWell will) be functioning in this building,” he said.
While that’s happening, the city will continue exploring options for the old city hall space, as well as what it will do with its information technology department and Fire Station #6.
“We know that that building, the useful life of it has really kind of reached its end,” he said.
He added: “If we were to save any of this space, it would be a complete remodel. And so, I don’t know that we’re going to save any money by doing that, but we want to make sure that we study that with our design professionals and make sure that we can answer that question.”
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