MERIDIAN —     It's going to look like a million bucks — or to adjust for inflation, 18 million bucks.

    That's how much it has cost the city to fund the massive renovation of its historic City Hall building, with the project costs doubling original estimates, and the time frame continually expanding with delay after delay.

    But with the last, finishing touches of the project finally under way, the beautiful historic building that has existed only in the imaginations of architects and city officials for the past five years has now nearly been realized.

    The project, which began in 2006, is a historically accurate but technologically modern reconstruction of the Beaux-Arts style building that was originally constructed in 1915.

    For many years after its opening, City Hall stood relatively unchanged, but in the 1950s and 1960s, the building, already old then, was equipped with modern conveniences that undermined much of the original architecture.

    Drop ceilings were installed to make room for air conditioning ducts, obscuring the high ceilings with rich plaster molding; wood paneling was put up to divide large chambers into small offices; mahogany windows were replaced with aluminum ones; fancy finishes were painted over with lurid blue, and the once grand building became drab and ordinary.

    But that's not why the city decided, around 2005, to renovate the building. They just wanted to make a few structural repairs. But once they started they found more damage that they first realized was there. On top of that, the city was required by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to make a historically accurate renovation.

    So what was supposed to be a two-year, less than 10 million project, turned into a massive renovation taking five years and costing $18 million. Whether it's worth it has been widely questioned, but there's no arguing that the end result will be a beautiful building with an intangible historic and architectural value.

    For the past five years, the building has been covered in boards and dust and tarps, but now the grandeur of the renovated City Hall is becoming apparent. Where ugly blue columns surrounded by plywood used to be, elegant scagliola columns on heavy marble bases now stand.

    You can't look anywhere inside City Hall without seeing marble. The double grand staircase, the customer service counter, many of the walls and floors are made of either marble that is original to the building or new marble that was purchased as part of the renovation. There will even be big marble tables, original to the building, in the customer service area.

    While marble adorns the walls and floors, plaster dominates the ceilings. All the second and third floor ceilings are framed with decorative plaster moldings. Most of the doorways and windows in the building are framed in mahogany, oak, or metal that's been skillfully painted to replicate wood. All the plaster in the building had to be cleaned, repaired, and re-glazed.

    The building has a variety of different floor coverings. Most of the floors are wood, marble, or a type of faux marble called terrazzo, but there are also tiled areas, and some of the ground floor offices will be carpeted.

    The ground floor, which was blocked with cement in the '60's to make an emergency shelter, has had all the cement blocks removed and will be home to the personnel and civil service departments.

    The second floor will include the finance and records department and the administrative offices of the city. The floor has been opened up, with the customer waiting area made larger, and drop ceilings and partitions removed.

    The third floor will be the most transformed from its pre-renovation state. The floor used to house the community development department, but that department has been moved to another building, and the third floor is home to a large auditorium, including a stage and modern media equipment, that will host city council meetings and will be available to the public for rental when it's not being used for city business.

    Though the interior of the building is coming together, there is still work to be done, most notably, the flooring for the third floor auditorium has and some of the first floor offices have yet to be installed. There are also many finishing touches, such as the installation of doorknobs, railings, light fixtures, and the like that remain to be done.

    Much of what the contractor still has on its to-do list, however, are things that can't be done until everything else is done - for example, testing of the electrical systems and final clean-up.

    There is some light landscaping, including grass, a few sidewalks, lighting, and handicap parking, that must be done before the building is opened to the public, and furniture must be moved in once the interior renovations are complete.

    The contractor says they will have the building finished and ready for the city workers by September, and Mayor Cheri Barry said she expects to have an open house of the building in the early fall. She said she expects a big turn out at the open house, with historians from across the region attending.

    "We want the people to come and use this building. We want the people to come and see it," said Barry. "It is their City Hall and it belongs to them."