By ROBERT LINNEHAN
Have something you need to do at the township hall this Friday? Planning on driving over to the town hall on Haddonfield-Berlin Road? Better hold your horses, because the township hall is going to be closed for half a day this Friday, May 13, in preparation of a massive weekend move into the new town hall digs at the Voorhees Town Center.
Township employees are nervously packing away their files and their computers like high school students going away to college, as the office will be completely transferred to the new town hall at the Voorhees Town Center over the weekend. It must be completed over the weekend, because the grand opening ceremony will be held on Monday, May 16 at 10:30 a.m.
It certainly won’t be as difficult as the old Virtua Health hospital moving all of its patients into its new facility, but it will still be tricky to move an entire town hall into a new office almost overnight.
If all goes according to plan, the new town hall will be open on Monday, May 16, at 8 a.m. The day before, the entire staff of the new town hall will be brought into the facility to make sure everything is working and operational for the next business day.
Mayor Michael Mignogna said the Voorhees public is invited out to the ribbon-cutting ceremony to visit the new facility. Tours will be provided of the new town hall space.
“The old Voorhees Town Hall served our community well for many decades. However, it became antiquated, inefficient and obsolete. Many of our employees have been working out of cramped trailers for over two decades. The new Town Hall at the Voorheees Town Center is state-of-the-art and will allow us to serve our residents more effectively and efficiently,” Mignogna said. “It is consistent with the idea of ‘smart growth’ in that it makes use of an existing facility rather than building a new separate structure.”
Construction on the new facility began in November, Township Administrator Larry Spellman previously said. The town hall will be located directly next to the Macy’s on the second floor of the town center.
In addition to the new, more modern facility, Mignogna said the building would be 40 percent more efficient than the current town hall. That equals a savings of about $10,000 a year for the township on reduced heating and energy bills.
“The move is another step in creating the ‘downtown’ that our community has never enjoyed,” he said.
The entire project was completed for about $6.1 million, Spellman previously reported. A moving company was contracted for $17,000 to move everything into the new facility, he said.
After the facility is moved, the township will look to sell the property of the old municipal complex. The property has been assessed at $2.5 million.
Four to five companies have already called about possibly purchasing the property. The township can actually hold onto the property for two years before it has to make a bond payment for the new town center, Spellman said, so it can wait for the market to improve and receive a better sale price.
