Lansdale Municipal Complex Renovations Talk of Town Hall

What was once the home of the Dewey Decimal System is now home to the criminal justice system.

What was once the post is now host to votes.

Lansdale Police Department and Lansdale Borough Hall have history to them: The former was the Lansdale Library in the 1950s and the latter was the original Lansdale Post Office in the 1930s.

Now, both buildings are the center of a facilities update in the borough. Both were deemed in poor condition, with countless mechical, structural and aesthetical problems, insufficient and tight spaces, and poorly-designed layouts.

Council can choose to build onto them or demolish them in favor of new state-of-the-art buildings — or do nothing.

The municipal complex renovations were the talk of Lansdale's Town Hall Session Tuesday night at the parks and recreation building, attended by more than 20 residents and officials.

"I'm against tearing down borough hall," said resident Rose Chapman. "On our side of town, the west ward, there's a lot of (historic) construction. Certainly from 1900. Our house is 1921. If you don't keep up with repairs ... you could have had some work to it."

Borough hall was renovated from the post office in the early 1980s. She compared the potential loss of borough hall to the loss of the Tremont Hotel at Main and Broad streets.

"We'll have another Tremont. And that's no more," Chapman said. 

Chapman wants to see borough hall incorporated into the plan.

"If you close off the side street (Railroad Avenue), you could have more room for the building," she said.

Town Hall co-moderator Doug DiPasquale, Lansdale Business Association head, who also serves as the LBA liaison to the Lansdale Economic Development Committee, said it might be good to have a new building.

"The way technology is changing, it needs to be done," he said.

Resident Jean Fritz remembered taking a previous tour of the police station.

"I remember, where they eat lunch is also where they clean their guns. It's not a good situation," Fritz said. "In today's day and age, you need to have a good police department."

Chapman mentioned how the borough recently put money into updated bathrooms at borough hall. Community Development Director John Ernst said the bathrooms were renovated to be American Disabilities Act-compliant as part of the contract agreement with Sen. Bob Mensch's office to use the building for the legislator's local office hours.

Fritz said it comes down to an estimated cost of $6.63 million to "fix the buildings and make them more usable" versus an estimated cost of $8.26 million to tear them down and make them more state-of-the-art.

"Six million to just fix it up is not good. With another $2 million, you get brand new buildings," Fritz said. "That's the way to go. It'd be different if it was a difference of $6 million versus $30 million."

Fritz brought up how the employees and departments on the second floor, like the codes department, must cover equipment, desks and the like with tarps during rainstorms.

"The roofs been fixed several times," Ernst said.

"If you patch it, it's just going to leak in another part," said resident John McCullough.

Utilities Director Jake Ziegler said the problem is the borough hall roof is not one single roof system; it is a combination of flat planes, steep slopes and dormers, and, not to mention, the numerous penetrations into the roof from the A/C units.

"It's an extremely complicated roof to have there," Ziegler said. "There's been a limited amount of maintenance done. You have to do the whole roof at once. There are probably four different roofing systems up there that are supposed to mesh together. The reality is a bit different."

Town Hall co-moderator Councilwoman Mary Fuller, who chairs the Economic Development Committee, Parks Committee and nonprofit Discover Lansdale, said, all in all, borough hall may look nice, "but aesthetically it's a disaster."

Resident Cathy Radcliffe asked how long a renovation would take at the municipal complex. Ernst said there would be some element of phasing as construction takes place. It could take up to two years, Ernst said, once you factor in the review process, the drawing and documenting of designs, the public bid process, and mobilization.

"By the time things start to mobilize, you're talking several months pushing two to three years," Ernst said.

Fritz asked who would ultimately pick a renovation plan, and Fuller told her borough council.

"Everybody would have input," Fuller said. She said residents can publicly issue their comments and questions at meetings or by contacting borough administration.

Don't think the cupola on borough hall is original — that one is long gone.

"(The cupola) was put in when it was renovated from a post office to borough hall," Ziegler said. "It's not really wood. It's more of a composite material that is deteriorated."

Barbara Thompson, of Chantilly Floral, asked if Lansdale Borough administration had any thought on moving borough hall to 311 W. Main St. in "the center of the town."

"No," said Fuller. "The building is not safe to be in."

"It has to be fixed one way or another," said Thompson.

"It's approved to move forward as performing arts," Fuller said.

Resident Steve Jones didn't think it was a good idea to have a police presence in the middle of a shopping area.

Ernst said the borough and Spiezle Architects looked at four other locations in Lansdale for borough hall. All were discounted, he said, because there were either financial issues or spatial issues.

Furthermore, the PCTI grant — also known as the Vine-Wood Connector — was awarded on conditions focused on the enhancement of the municipal complex. The connector runs adjacent to the property.

"The PCTI is committed. The basis for getting that is the fact that the complex is along the Vine Street corridor. It improves the corridor and continues over to Main Street with streetscape similar to Main Street," Ziegler said.

Fuller said that if borough hall moves, Lansdale has to pay some of that PCTI money back.

"It's nice to get a lot of outside dollars, but there are often strings attached," she said.

Ziegler said construction on the PCTI project could start in March or April, but it's not guaranteed. 

"We can't start construction until all right-of-ways are obtained," he said. "We are hoping to be on target."

Properties that have not signed off on right-of-way acquisitions yet are The Reporter/JRC (Derstine Avenue between Wood Street and Susquehanna Avenue), Verizon (Vine Street between Broad Street and St. Elmo Street) and the Lansdale Post Office (Vine Street between St. Elmo Street and Montgomery Avenue).

"The offer to The Reporter is in their hands and we are waiting to hear back from them," Ziegler said. "For the post office, a bureaucrat in South Carolina has to sign off on it, and they probably have to take it to Congress."

Resident Nancy Frei asked how long the project would take to completion. Carl Saldutti, Lansdale parks director, said most grants have completion dates three years out.

"The borough has to get everything done and validate moving forward," Saldutti said.

Fuller said nothing happens as fast as even she would like to see it happen in local government. She said the borough will keep the community updated, even through the red tape.

"It's just the way government works, no matter how hard you try," she said.

The next Lansdale Town Hall is March 26, 2013 at 7 p.m. at Lansdale Parks and Recreation Buiding.