The mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano, has inaugurated this Thursday the building of the new Town Hall, a modern construction that reinforces the transformation of the urban center, at the same time that it supposes the unification of all the municipal dependencies, which facilitates the internal management of material and personal resources, improving the service, the comfort and the attention to the citizens.
The councilor has been accompanied in the extraordinary plenary session for the inauguration of this space by the Minister of Justice, Local Administration and Public Function of the Junta de Andalucía, José Antonio Nieto, the Minister of Social Services of the Autonomous City of Ceuta, Dunia Mohamed Mohand, the president of the Provincial Council, Francisco Salado, the delegate of the Government of the Junta de Andalucía in Málaga, Patricia Navarro and the senator and mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce among other authorities.
García Urbano stressed that “this magnificent public facility is yet another reason to feel proud of the progress and great improvement that, among all of us, we have achieved in the city. It is another symbol of our continuous commitment to quality of life and the well-being of citizens”. Likewise, he has indicated that it is the “culmination” of all the revitalization of the city center, emphasizing that these dependencies are “in the heart of the city”.
On the other hand, he referred to the fact that after 12 years of intense work putting the municipal accounts in order, going from a inherited debt from 304 million euros to 49 million eurosand “after having provided the city with the great sports and cultural facilities and even the long-awaited hospital, and after the great modernization carried out, achieving recovery of the collective self-esteem of the city, Estepona attends the inauguration of a new Casa Consistory”.
In this sense, he pointed out that the new building “will offer a better service to citizens and it will become a symbol, both for its architectural value, for its strategic location and for its sustainability and efficiency characteristics”. It should be noted that the building will be energy self-sufficient and all the energy necessary for its operation will be carried out through a photovoltaic system.
This building for administrative use consists of 13,068 square meters; Of these, 9,157 are built above ground, including a ground floor plus seven floors (same height as the adjoining building) and 3,911 square meters that are below ground, including a mezzanine and a basement for a public car park with capacity for 131 spaces. This new car park, which is already in operation, is incorporated into the Municipal Parking Network at a cost of one euro per day for the user. It will remain open 24 hours a day, Monday through Sunday.
In the ground floor of the new Town Hall In Estepona, the uses with the greatest public attendance have been established, with the access hall, reception, general registration and technical assistance. All this is located in an open space that allows access to the different departments and that connects with the rest of the building. On the first floor is the Plenary Hall, endowed with a multifunctional character, capable of hosting different uses. The upper body of the building houses the different municipal delegations that make up the City Council. The building is surrounded by a lattice whose qualities are lightness, transparency and permeability, which provides a controlled luminosity through different degrees of opacity of the die-cut design and which achieves integration into the urban landscape.
They highlight construction as a sustainable benchmark
Within the line of continuous improvement and efficiency of uses that characterizes the municipal government, the new City Hall building is a environmental benchmark for the city. The property has an accessible and sustainable design of equipment, in which energy efficiency has been one of the priorities, thus providing it with the highest levels of energy savings through renewable sources and bioclimatic solutions.
The new building has obeyed, from its conception to its execution, a series of design strategies that allow it to achieve the sustainable construction denomination in favor of the quality of life of its users and of the city as a whole. In this sense, it should be noted that all the measures carried out to achieve energy efficiency have followed the reference guidelines established by the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) sustainability certification standard, granted by the international organization Green Building Council.
Among some of the actions adopted, we can highlight the material solution of the lattice-shaped facade envelope, which favors thermal protection against direct solar radiation, without losing the visual possibility from the inside, resulting in a volume of great architectural value. In addition to a technical improvement in the insulation of the opaque enclosure, external glass with reduction of the solar factor and adequate control of light transmission have been used to reduce thermal gains.
On the other hand, the facilities have very high efficiency energy recuperators in the primary air system that allow maximum energy use. Indoor air quality and room ventilation are achieved by high-performance, low-consumption photocatalytic purification equipment, which helps control ambient CO2 levels. Likewise, the luminaires used guarantee the necessary levels of intensity by means of energy-saving LED-type lamps whose system allows the flow to be regulated according to the contribution of external natural light, allowing optimization of time and cost of use and maintenance. On the other hand, the underground car park has a charging station for electric vehicles.