VIDALIA — Barring some unforeseen computer or telephone problems, Monday morning Vidalia’s city government will open in its new location off of U.S. 84 near Walmart.

City offices were closed Thursday and Friday for the move from the former City Hall at 409 Texas St. to the new municipal complex, which includes a 10,000-square-foot municipal office building, 8,000-square-foot police station and a 12,000-square-foot fire department building. The city has previously said it plans to use the old police and fire building on John Dale Drive as a substation, and the former City Hall will be used for an IT department.

“We should be up and running by Monday,” Vidalia Mayor Hyram Copeland said. “Just about everybody has moved into the new building, and we have got signage at the Old City Hall that refers them to the new City Hall.”

Before the moves could be made, the city also had to furnish the building, which Copeland said cost between $30,000 and $35,000.

Some of those furnishings were bought used from the state, Copeland said.

“We had to buy some new chairs for the new meeting room, and the ladies in the front needed new desks because theirs were built into the walls (in the old building),” Copeland said.

A $6.94 million U.S. Department of Agriculture loan to be paid out over 40 years financed the complex. The loan, taken out in October 2010, included the new furniture.

“We had $100,000 built in (the loan) for new furniture,” Copeland said.

“It didn’t cost as much as we anticipated.”

While the offices will be open for business as usual in the interim, Copeland said the city will probably wait to have an official open house at the new municipal complex until the adjacent recreation complex is completed, a completion that projected for sometime this summer.

“I would like to have an open house for the recreation complex and the city complex at the same time, to give the public a chance to walk through all of it,” he said.

The municipal complex project was first announced in March 2009.