City Council adopted the programming plan for Downtown West, which will create a civic center near the library, at its Dec. 8 meeting.

The city of Georgetown Planning Department opened in its new location in the historic Light and Water Works building at Eighth and Martin Luther King Jr. streets Jan. 4.

The Light and Water Works building is part of the city’s Downtown West plan to create a civic center, which also includes converting the former library at 808 Martin Luther King Jr. St. into a new City Hall and renovating the Georgetown Communications and Technology Building at 510 W. Ninth St. as the new municipal court and council chamber.

The city’s economic development department and some smaller departments, including the public communications department, Main Street Program and housing department, moved into the Light and Waterworks building in November.

City staff is expected to present schematic designs for the new City Hall and the municipal court and council chamber buildings to City Council in early 2016, and construction documents could be presented to the council for approval this summer.

The city also completed a traffic impact analysis and parking study in the area. According to the study, about 44 parking spaces are expected to be eliminated by the project; however, there are 72 surplus parking spaces during peak parking use.

The city is hosting an open house meeting about the plan at 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 20 in the new planning department offices.