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Dennis Proposes Naming West Lafayette City Hall After Sonya Margerum

Stan Jastrzebski
/
WBAA

When renovations to West Lafayette’s city hall are complete, the building could be renamed to honor the city’s longest-serving mayor.

Though the exact terminology is yet to be worked out, current Mayor John Dennis is proposing to rename the Morton Center for six-term leader Sonya Margerum.

Margerum died Sunday at age 89, some 16 years after stepping away from the office she held from 1980 to 2003.

Dennis was planning the honorarium even before he won his fourth term in office in Tuesday’s election.

“It’s the least that we can do," Dennis says. "Some people have statues, some people have other different things, but we think that when you talk about how do you truly recognize somebody for all the work that they’ve done and how they’ve truly impacted not just a community, but the citizens within that community, I think by giving her an honor – by naming something that’s going to be around for a long time, like a building, after her is the best thing that we can do, at least in my administration.”

A fountain at the base the Myers Pedestrian Bridge connecting Lafayette and West Lafayette already bears Margerum’s name.

Dennis says it’ll likely take at least another year’s worth of overhauling the Morton Center before city employees can move back in. There’s no word on when an official renaming – if approved by the city council – would happen.

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