Municipal building on Antrim Township agenda

December 18, 2006|by JENNIFER FITCH

GREENCASTLE, Pa. - Antrim Township, Pa., could solicit bids for a new, multimillion-dollar government building as early as next month.

Detailed plans right now are sitting on desks in the township's offices on Antrim Church Road, awaiting final comments from staff and elected officials.

Preliminary plans for the approximately 17,000-square-foot office building carried a price tag of $5 million to $6 million. The township owns the 26.6-acre site where the building is proposed.

A representative of Chambersburg, Pa., architect Newcomer Associates is scheduled to present revisions at Tuesday's Antrim Township Supervisors meeting.

"The land development is still going through the processes in the township," Supervisor Robert Whitmore said.

The township has confirmed its tax collector will move to the new facility off U.S. 11 south of Greencastle, but the school district declined to move its tax office there, Whitmore said.

"We're still pretty confident the district justice's office will be moving there," he said, noting a lease agreement has not been signed.

If it meets the supervisors' approval, the complex would include a shell building possibly to be used by a new police department in the future.

"It's going to be bid separately, and then we'll decide if we're going to build," Whitmore said.

The second floor of the main building is planned to be left unfinished, leaving space for growth. The complex would include maintenance garages.

Supervisor Curtis Myers, who with Supervisor Samuel Miller cast dissenting votes to the plans in the spring, said he plans to continue to vote against the new facility. He said he has "six million" different reasons, referring to the price and calling the building "a Taj Mahal."

Whitmore previously told The Herald-Mail that the township plans to pay for the building out of its capital reserve fund, without raising taxes or floating a bond issue.

"I don't feel we need it," Myers said Sunday night. "I feel it's way overpriced."

Headquarters for a joint police department with the Borough of Greencastle "would be the only thing I could see there would be any good for," Myers said.

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