FULL STORY: Coral Gables vacates iconic City Hall for full restoration. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a><\/p>\nHere are key takeaways:<\/p>\n
\u2022 The roof, walls and windows are leaking. The building\u2019s limestone and stucco exterior is badly cracked, and four of the Corinthian pillars in the colonnade are close to fracturing.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Architects discovered that four failing exterior columns are missing the reinforced-concrete cores and steel reinforcement shown in the original building plans. The plan calls for removing those columns, installing steel supports, then reinstalling the originals over them.<\/p>\n
\u2022 A major part of the project is replacing the building\u2019s electrical, mechanical and fire-safety systems.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The semicircular City Commission chamber, altered decades ago, will be returned to its historic layout, with the dais moved back to its original position facing the colonnade and eight tall windows.<\/p>\n
\u2022 An entrance garden and courtyard on the west side that was partially paved over will be restored to architect Phineas Paist\u2019s original symmetrical design. Paist modeled City Hall after the Philadelphia Exchange building of 1834.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Restoration architect Richard Heisenbottle\u2019s team still needs three to four more months of deeper analysis before construction can begin. One open question: whether the building contains asbestos.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The city opted to replace the original 1928 wooden casement windows with custom steel replicas designed to meet hurricane standards, a decision that drew objections from preservationists and some residents.<\/p>\n
This report was produced with the assistance of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence and using our own originally reported, written and published content. It was reviewed and edited by our journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coral Gables City Manager Peter J. Iglesias looks through renovation and restoration plans on Wednesday, March 4, 2026.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[86647,90455,225,227,226,90453,90454],"class_list":["post-194726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-coral-gables-city-hall-restoration","tag-coral-gables-renovation","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-historic-building-repair","tag-phineas-paist-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Coral](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MIA_2026-03-04AD0184CoralGablesCityHallrenovations.JPG\" "\\"Coral")
<\/p>\n