A new and improved California Municipal Building
Kelly Tunney | Herald-Standard
The police wing of the California Municipal Building features a new operations room, extra holding cell, extra interview room and men’s and women’s locker rooms for the borough’s police department.
Kelly Tunney | Herald-Standard
Workers from Hollowood Heating walk back into the California Municipal Building, where they are still completing a renovation and addition project that has updated the entire facility.
“New is good.”
As California Police Chief Richard Encapera notes, there’s a lot new about the freshly renovated California Municipal Building on Third Street, so much that it was worth waiting a year for the renovations to be completed.
“I want to thank the public for being so patient with us,” Council President Patsy Alfano said. “There was no parking at all for about a year.”
Now there’s five to six additional parking spaces, and a whole lot more.
A new police wing was constructed onto the borough building, with administrative offices shifted to the already existing portion of the building where the police offices were previously located. The police wing retains the same beige brick design with red and blue exterior as the rest of the building.
According to Alfano, more than 20 years had elapsed by since the last borough building renovation, and when a refinanced bond issue gave the borough approximately $900,000 for a designated borough project, the renovation became that project.
There was an additional cost of between $300,000 and $400,000 to the borough,” Alfano said. “But the borough didn’t have to borrow any money.”
The new police wing features a new operations room, an extra holding cell and an extra interview room, in addition to men’s and women’s locker rooms that replaced the unisex locker room setup the department previously had.
The police evidence room is now larger and ventilated, according to Encapera, which comes in handy when dealing with odorous items of evidence.
“My office got enlarged, though that’s really not my style,” Encapera said.
New administrative offices have been installed for zoning, sewage and other areas of operation.
“Zoning and code enforcement officers have room to spread out maps now,” Borough Administrator Dr. Richard Martin said while giving a tour of the renovated building. “They didn’t have the space to do that before.”
Alfano said since the entire building is generator-powered, it will be dedicated as an emergency center, adding that the size of the building has been doubled due to the renovations. Upgrades also include a new heating, ventilating and air conditioning system as well as new energy-efficient, LED lighting.
California officials worked in cramped conditions together in council chambers during the renovations, Martin said, though he added that setup worked to his advantage after he became administrator in September, allowing him to literally work more closely with his borough associates.
Alfano and Martin said council is targeting Feb. 11, the date of its next regular meeting, to hold an open house at the borough building to show off some of the new renovations.
Renovation work is currently in its final stages, consisting of minor fix-ups. Encapera said police have enjoyed their new wing for the past two and a half months.
“It’s beautiful,” Encapera said.