NORTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. — After more than a year of work, North Whitehall Township officials on Thursday cut the ribbon on their newly renovated municipal building.
The project began with plans to renovate North Whitehall’s public meeting room. Rated to hold about 40 people including officials and township staff, it could no longer accommodate the large crowds drawn to especially controversial meetings.
"We quickly realized we were going to outgrow the space within the next year, so we started to look toward the future.”North Whitehall Township Manager Randy Cope
“As our steering committee got together, we quickly realized we were going to outgrow the space within the next year, so we started to look toward the future,” Township Manager Randy Cope said.
An addition to the front of the building houses a new public meeting room able to hold more than 200 people, plus an office for the township’s tax collector just inside the front door.
Inside the existing building, staff offices and workspaces all have been thoroughly reworked with input from the employees who use them.
New offices for township zoning and planning staff surround an extra-large work table with enough space to gather around the large architectural drawings, as big as 2.5 feet wide and 3.5 feet long, that the department regularly reviews.
Classroom, meeting rooms, facade
Upstairs, the renovation created new staff offices and consolidated storage rooms, putting all of the township’s paper records in one place for the first time in recent memory.
North Whitehall’s old meeting room, meanwhile, has become a “training room.”
As its name implies, it can serve as a classroom for township employees or community groups.
However, it’s set up to serve a number of different roles as needed, including as an emergency operations center for emergency management personnel during a crisis.
“Maybe 80 percent of people may not set foot in this building, but it's important that it looks professional and nice from the outside.”North Whitehall Township Manager Randy Cope
For especially well-attended meetings, television screens inside can show a live feed from the main meeting room across the hall.
Throughout the building, township officials included empty desks for future hires, planning for North Whitehall’s government to grow along with the township amid a flurry of recent development.
For township residents, the most obvious change probably will be the building’s new facade, Cope said.
“We focused very much on trying to blend the new building with the old building and try to make something that our residents would be proud of,” he said.
“Maybe 80 percent of people may not set foot in this building, but it's important that it looks professional and nice from the outside.”
14 months, $6 million
For the course of the 14-month project, most township staff have operated out of offices at 4110 Independence Drive in Schnecksville; most government meetings took place at Lehigh Carbon Community College.
The public works department remained in its garage headquarters near the municipal building throughout construction.
Workers moved back into the renovated municipal building in August.
The township’s planning commission, board of supervisors, and other bodies began meeting in the new space this month.
In all, the project came in slightly under budget at a cost of nearly $6 million, according to Cope, though he said officials still are finalizing the figure.
