City hosts grand opening for new Public Service Center

The City of San Marcos hosted a grand opening event for the new Public Service Center on Wednesday.

Located near the intersection of Clovis Barker Road and East McCarty Lane at 2217 E. McCarty Lane, the newly opened development houses the city’s public works and utilities departments.

The opening event was complete with a big truck cutting through the ceremonial ribbon and guided tours of the new building to celebrate the new development.

The modern, centralized location will be home to about 180 city employees within various departments, including general services, traffic, electric, water and facility maintenance staff.

“We've been separated and located in different locations throughout the city,” Director of Utilities Tyler Hjorth said. “By bringing the groups together in utilities, for example, we're going to be able to smooth-line our processes in administration, warehousing, GIS technologies, engineering, a lot of things that we were having to do individually.”

The new PSC location will give San Marcans the opportunity for better customer service experiences, Director of Public Works Saba Avila said.

Above, an aerial photo of the City of San Marcos's new Public Service Center located on Clovis Barker Blvd. Photo courtesy of the City of San Marcos

“The customers of San Marcos will see improved service and faster service,” Avila said.

Hjorth said the city’s department operations will also see benefits from the Public Service Center.

“The benefits that we'll see in controlling our operations, both during normal situations and also during emergencies is going to be greatly improved so we're really excited about that,” Hjorth said.

The city broke ground on the new public services center in August 2020. Alongside providing a centralized location for city services, the new center included sustainable features, which were requested by the San Marcos City Council. Two buildings include 500-kilowatt solar energy panels. Additionally, there are four 18,000-gallon rainwater capture cisterns, high recycled content building materials and low-flow plumbing fixtures. The center’s total design-construction estimated cost is $44 million and was funded through certificates of obligation. The city worked with Hunt Companies, Lawrence Group, Flintco, LLC., and Jacobs Property Management Company for the project.

Hjorth called Wednesday's grand opening event for the PSC a success.

“We had a great turnout, weather was great and everybody had a good time and, you know, focus on the mission that we're going to fulfill in the city for the next 50 years, which is public service,” Hjorth said.