Written by Cristopher Correa and Gabriel Matnog
Since the summer of 2017, Malden City Hall has been undergoing changes in order to construct a brand new city hall. Relocations have been made and city hall is now split up into two buildings, one on 17 Pleasant street and the other on 110 Pleasant street. There is also a small space for Public Facilities at the CBD Garage and an office for the Parking Department at the Jackson Street Garage.
Mayor Gary Christenson is excited for the brand new city hall to be constructed as “there were a number of reasons why [they] needed to reconstruct”. The old city hall had been built back in 1975 with roughly 130,000 square feet, but they were only using about 40,000 of it. Christenson stated, “The former building had needed about $10-$12 million dollars worth of repairs to make it more efficient and functional.”.
It was also not in the best location as it was “smack-dab” in the middle between the Malden Center T station and downtown Malden. With the new buildings, it will instead be a bridge between the two places. The financing of the new city hall also included a new police station and that was “too good to pass up”. The police station moved from 200 Pleasant Street to 800 Eastern Ave, across the street from Planet Fitness.
Christenson also stated, “Pleasant Street will be a thruway once again. [They] hope that this will bridge the downtown to the T center and bring retail, residential, and civic uses to revitalize the area”. While other improvements are unconfirmed, Malden city hall and the revamped pleasant street will be finished sometime in 2019.
