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SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga Springs city officials broke ground for a new city hall and library building the mayor says will help fill the growing city's needs.
The new building at 367 S. Saratoga Road, next to the Public Safety Building, will be four stories tall, provide office space for both city and county services, council chambers for public meetings and additional community multiuse areas.
Mayor Jim Miller said a lot of people in the community have been involved in helping the 27-year-old city grow. He said the city has mainly focused on infrastructure, and this new city hall is "the next step" that will help Saratoga Springs "grow in a responsible manner."
"This is great to see this come to fruition. We spent a lot of years buying water and infrastructure to make sure we had things in place for a growing city," he said at the groundbreaking Monday.
Miller, who has been the mayor for the past 11 years, said the new facility will allow for proper staffing levels to adequately support residents as the city has gone from 2,000 residents to more than 60,000. He witnessed how city hall started in a trailer with the former mayor, then grew into a dentist office and will now have its own building.
"This is just a continuation of a large development complex that will be the community center of Saratoga Springs. This will be our home," he said. "We're just developing and growing the community and trying to do it right."
The mayor said growing quickly is a challenge for any city and being such a young city, building up the community is the hardest part.
"Ten years ago, everybody was from a neighborhood, and today, they're from Saratoga Springs. There's ownership, there's pride in the community, and this is just that next step in building a gathering place where people say 'I am from Saratoga Springs,'" Miller said.
Utah County Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner said Saratoga Springs has done a great job at planning for the future.
"They recognize they are the growth community; not just Saratoga Springs, but Eagle Mountain as well," she said.
Powers Gardner said the county has plans to build a facility in Saratoga Springs, but there isn't enough money to do that quite yet.
"Because they're breaking ground here, we're going to be able to rent the second floor, and we're going to be able to bring services to the citizens on the west side of the county significantly earlier. Instead of on a 10-year plan, we're gonna do that in three years," she said.
The county will implement satellite locations for all offices, departments and services at this building to centralize resources for all county residents, making access to county services "significantly more convenient" for those who live on the west side of the freeway.
She said having a county location in Saratoga Springs is also good for the environment as it will reduce the need for people to drive on Pioneer Crossing to get to the county's main facility in Provo.
"Every citizen that doesn't have to drive on Pioneer Crossing to get to a facility, to get their child's immunizations or to a WIC clinic, or get a birth certificate, that's smog out of our air and trips off of our streets. This really helps us with sustainability and gets the services to the growth communities a good seven years faster than we would otherwise," she said.
The new library will have four times the capacity of the current library, with programming space, study rooms and nooks, a business center and casual seating for reading.
A city press release said residents wanted the new building to have a connection to nature, so the facility will have large windows and skylights to take advantage of natural light and showcase views of Mount Timpanogos and Utah Lake.
The mayor said he remembers when the library was started in the basement of a bank, with just a small collection of donated books. He watched it grow to the large collection that is "heavily used," and he is excited for the city to have a building that matches the needs of the community today and in the future.
Heather Milburn has lived in Saratoga Springs for almost five years. She brought her sons to the groundbreaking because she wanted them to see how hard the city is working on big projects.
"I know it's been a big deal to get this library up and going and I thought it'd be a special moment for them to say that they have been at the groundbreaking," she said. "With my three little boys, they love to read books and I know we will be here a lot. We live close by, so we will definitely use what they're going to build."
The city hall and library building is anticipated to be completed in fall of 2025. The mayor said the city is planning to continue developing the area to better walking trails that connect the buildings to the marina being built on the north end of the lake.
