Keene City Hall hosts grand opening

After many years of waiting to expand, more than 100 gathered on Monday to celebrate the grand opening of the new Keene City Hall and Community Center, 1000 N. Old Betsy Road.

Designed by Callahan & Freeman Architects, the building, just shy of 30,000 square feet, was built on 3 acres of land across from Elisa Carver Park on Old Betsy Road.

In the city hall side, there is room for 72 people to attend city council meetings. During municipal court, some of the seats can be removed to accommodate a jury panel leaving room for 63 people. Then, the back portion of city hall will be the administrative offices with several waiting areas and work spaces.

The community center side seats up to 250 people and includes an outdoor patio.

Southwestern Adventist University President Ken Shaw said Monday was a great day for the city of Keene.

"Today the citizens of Keene are seeing their dreams become reality," he said. "In my experience, dreams and reality are two different things. In the good book, Proverbs tells us there is no vision the people perish. Well, we had a vision in the city of Keene and for dreams to become a reality it requires a tremendous amount of energy, time and resources.

"Mayor James Chapline, City Manager Brian LaBorde and the city council, you have demonstrated these components of leadership and for your foresight commitment and planning, this dream is now a reality. This quality new facility represents the quality seen in the citizens and businesses in Keene. It is a facility that will be attracted to future citizens and future businesses as they desire to learn more about our special community. On behalf of the Southwestern Adventist University family, congratulations on a job well done."

The city had been using a 1,500-square-foot building for city hall that is owned by SWAU.

According to an agreement between the city and the university, the city needed to vacate before March 2017 so the university can use the building, but missed the deadline. An extension was granted, allowing for construction of the new building to be completed.

Chapline said it took a team to make the city's dream become reality.

"And we have a fantastic team that has managed to pull this off," Chapline said. "I want to thank everybody that had a hand in this. When we started this project, I was the project manager and the new city manager came in. After he got his feet on the ground I turned that duty over to him. He did a splendid job on following the millions of details that it takes to make everything happen on time."

Keene ISD Superintendent Ricky Stephens, who is president of Keene's Type B board, said the new city hall and community center gives the implication that something special is going on in Keene.

"I grew up a Baptist preacher's kid and there were church vans everywhere all through my life," Stephens said. "Those church vans only ran two or three times a year. I remember as a kid having to weed eat around the tires because if it wasn't an official meeting of the church, those vans were off limits.

"When I moved to Mineola [Texas] as a 30-year-old, we had a church van sitting in a parking lot and it never moved — the tires were rotting off of them because there wasn't enough official church things to do. One of the things I started doing was wearing that van out.

"I would take it to a church softball game and to the mall when I would take Sunday school kids there. I'd take it on ski trips and I'd take it everywhere."

Stephens said he did that because he wanted people who drove by to see the church sign on the can and think, "Something is happening at that place."

"When we started talking about this city hall that's all I could think of ... what does this community center and city hall say about Keene? It says that something is happening here and that there is life in this town," Stephens said. "Because when you'd drive in and want to do business in Keene or want to build houses and pull into the old city hall, it doesn't whisper death — it screams it at the top of its lungs.

"That's no offense to all the hard work done there, because that's all we had. But it hollered don't do business with us because we're small time. When you pull up now in front of this building it says bring us your business because something is happening here. We went out on a vision that we can be more than we have been."

Congressional congrats

Don Nichols, field representative for U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, R-Austin, presented Keene with a U.S. flag.

"Congressman Williams sends his best wishes to you as you continue to be one of the shining stars in District 25," Nichols said. "This is just a great community. I like coming up here because people are friendly and they remember who you are when you meet them. That's a great thing. May God continue to bless the great community of Keene, Texas, in the greatest state in the country we call the United States of America."

State Rep. DeWayne Burns, R-Cleburne, said the grand opening signified a great day for Keene for several reasons.

"In 1960 when the census was done there was roughly around 1,500 folks in the city of Keene," Burns said. "The last census that was done in 2010 I think had a little over 6,100. This is a growing community and it's one of our best kept secrets in Johnson County. This building, and what is going on in this community, is going to let that secret out of the bag."

Burns said when painting the picture of a great community, people look at the leadership, education and safety.

"Those are the things people look at and ask about when looking at a community," Burns said. "I think this is just another aspect, another ingredient, to making Keene another one of our premier communities in Johnson County and in Texas. I'm excited to have this facility in my district and I plan on attending many events here."

Suzy DeArmond, field representative for state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, extended Birdwell's congratulations to the city of Keene.

"This is indeed a great accomplishment," she said. "I know this new center will be greatly beneficial to the community as you continue to grow and prosper."