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The Mercer County Central Services Building, located at 220 W. Livingston St. in Celina, will be renovated and reconfigured to best utilize county property.
CELINA - Mercer County Commissioners have begun mapping out a blueprint for the reconfiguration and renovation of the Central Services Building, a project intended to better utilize county property. The project is without a clear budget or timeline at the moment.
Commissioners, working alongside project architect Garmann Miller, are toying with a number of possibilities, including the likely relocation of Mercer County Job and Family Services, veterans services and possibly OhioMeansJobs to the first floor of the Central Services Building.
Those offices are currently situated either in the basement or second floor of the Central Services Building. Moving them to the first floor would provide easier access to parents with children and veterans who may be aging or suffering health ailments.
Now that Mercer Soil and Water Conservation District, OSU Extension and USDA Farm Service Agency have relocated from the Central Services Building, located at 220 W. Livingston St. in Celina, to the Mercer County Ag Center at 4978 Mud Pike, there's open space on the first floor of the building to reposition offices.
The county in 1995 purchased the 40,931-square-foot Central Services Building from Celina Insurance Group, which had used the facility as a training center. Following a renovation, several county offices, including that of county commissioners, moved into the building.
Officials with multiple county agencies located in the courthouse and Central Services Building in recent years have drawn attention to increasingly cramped quarters and a lack of storage for documents they are bound by law to retain.
In response, commissioners studied the areas occupied by the auditor, common pleas court, probate/juvenile court, clerk of courts, board of elections, community development, recorder, treasurer, emergency management agency, emergency medical services, law library, prosecutor, commissioners, child support enforcement agency, job and family services, sanitary department, health department and veterans services.
They then committed themselves to shuffling county agencies in the Central Services Building to better suit their needs.
Commissioners, however, made clear that they are in no rush, telling Mercer County Health District officials on Thursday morning that the project would not likely get underway until early next year.
Aside for the need to reconfigure existing space within, the building itself, including its HVAC system, is in good shape and should serve the county for decades to come, they said.
Commissioners also noted they will have a better grasp of the potential project estimate once a solid plan materializes.
The work would unfold in phases, with the personnel of each office undergoing renovation to be temporarily relocated to the basement or second floor to allow for services to continue uninterrupted.
"I wish I could tell you I had a great plan, that everything was going to be fine and there was going to be no headaches, but I guarantee you there's probably going to be headaches," commissioner Dave Buschur told health district officials.
Health district administrator Michelle Kimmel, after being assured accommodations would be made to ensure the continuation of her office's day-to-day operations during construction, said she understood the commissioners' position.
"There's no way to avoid that," she replied to Buschur. "You can't know, at this point either. There's just too many questions."
The lobby of the Health Department located on the first floor of the Central Services Building.
The health district is responsible for preventing and controlling the spread of infectious diseases; assessing and monitoring environmental factors that potentially impact public health, including air, water, soil and food; and assuring quality in health care facilities and services and environmental health., among other duties.
The health district's primary operations are carried out in an office on the first floor of the Central Services Building. Its environmental division is located on the second floor.
During a facilities assessment a few years ago , then health commissioner Jason Menchhofer noted the health district had 16 employees and foresaw the need for two more in the future. The health district today has been scaled back a bit, with 13 positions on the books.
Kimmel said she doesn't see that figure rising any time soon.
District officials and commissioners on Thursday morning discussed the need to redesign the health district office's layout to make better use of the existing space and to add insulation to soundproof wall partitions to provide for better privacy of clients in the clinic rooms.
Buschur suggested keeping the four clinic rooms open while the yet-to-be determined contractor creates new clinical rooms elsewhere within the health district's office on the first floor.
"It'd be best, most cost-effective, if we could leave the old clinic operating while we redesigned the new clinic on the same floor, in the same space, and then once that's done just flipping (to) the new clinic," he said.
Director of Nursing Misty Kleman made one request to commissioners.
"I cannot do this clinic in a renovation during cough, cold and flu season," she said, noting the heavy influx of clients coming in from about August to January. "I just know that we get really crazy like right at back-to-school time, and then we are slammed until just after the beginning of the year."
Commissioners indicated the project most likely won't begin until early next year.
