8-phase renovation project to modernize county municipal building through 2026

2026 is shaping up to be a busy year at the Lebanon County Municipal Building. 

Besides the usual county business, workers will complete eight phases of renovations around a majority of the building. The facelift is projected to cost between $5.1 million and $7.4 million, predominantly funded through the American Rescue Plan Act.

ARPA funding was created by the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic to spur economic growth. Lebanon County received about $27 million of $1.9 billion in federal aid disbursed nationwide for capital projects across the Lebanon Valley that meet specific program guidelines.

Phase 1A encompasses renovations to the adjacent Public Defenders and Assessment offices on the first floor. It’s well underway and slated for completion in mid-February.

LebTown previously reported this phase is an estimated cost of $504,221.

Modernization from paper to digitized records in the Assessment and additional space needed for the Public Defender have led to the realignment of the walls to give more room to PD, according to county administrator Jamie Wolgemuth.

“Digitized and less foot traffic here,” Wolgemuth said during a tour while in Assessment, which is losing around 400 square feet to PD. “Ten years ago you could come in here and there’d be three or four realtors or surveyors or others, you know, all our attorneys, title searchers. Now they all sit at their desks and do it from wherever they are.”

Shepherding the projects is a juggling act while county workers continue to carry out their daily duties, he added. 

For example, renovations are currently taking place in Assessment but not in the PD space. Assessment is located temporarily in the old city treasurer offices on the east side of the first floor along 8th Street. Wires and computer hardware are visible at the front desk since their time in that location is limited.

“So there’s people right on the other side of this now (in PD). And once this is done over here (Assessment), a lot of those (from PD) will come over here and then we’ll do some work on that side,” Wolgemuth said. 

Various renovations are being completed by workers from Funk Construction, the general contractor for the project, within Assessment. Changes include new carpeting and HVAC.

“The mechanicals had to be redone, duct work, and the heating and cooling units to serve more offices rather than open space. So each of these offices has to have their own drops for HVAC,” Wolgemuth said, while pointing to one overhead installed heating unit within Assessment. “The boilers, the heating units are actually up in the ceiling. That’s got water going to it. So that’s a heater, and it serves different areas.”

One component to the renovations will see the relocation of some offices to new locations to improve efficiency and be more consumer-friendly. Voter Registration, for example, will move from the second floor into the former city treasurer offices on the first to make it more convenient for voters.

“We’re putting Voter Registration down(stairs) with the more frequently accessed offices,” Wolgemuth said. “We have more and more people coming in now that they can do the mail-in ballot. … And you remember in the presidential year, I mean, the (second-floor) hallway was packed. And we have a lot of people who maybe only do that a few times or maybe never did it before. So now they’re trying to navigate the building. … Plus, they (Voter Registration) will have more space. So that’ll be part of the one that’s most visible, with the most (consumer) touches.“

While Voter Registration is slated to occur in Phase 3, that may change following a meeting this week between county officials and Beers + Hoffman, the architectural firm serving as project manager for four phases of the renovation project.

“The meeting on the 7th is to just start to hammer out, ‘Okay, maybe we need to reshuffle here,’” Wolgemuth said. “I don’t want to move them, say, ‘Okay, moving day is two weeks before the election.’ That’s not in the cards. So once Assessment comes out of the city treasury, that may cause me to move Voter Registration (on the schedule). Right now they’re in Phase 3, so they might become (Phase) 2 for that reason. But that’s the kind of thing we’re gonna talk about.”

As previously reported by LebTown, Phase 2 as scheduled will encompass offices for Children & Youth Services, the Sheriff, and the former Department of Emergency Services spaces downstairs, followed by the District Attorney, and Victim Witness.

Phase 3 includes Elections, Human Resources, and the County Solicitor, all on the second floor. Phase 4 renovations include the Law Library, Court Administration and miscellaneous areas on the third floor. 

Wolgemuth said HR will move from the commissioner’s office and into the area currently occupied by Voter Registration – in part because HR isn’t centralized currently – and the solicitor will relocate into the commissioner’s office. 

Additionally, Information Technology staff will leave the second floor and occupy the DA’s space on the ground floor. The DA’s office will move to the space formerly occupied by Lebanon City Police. And the County Sheriff and staff are poised to relocate into the former offices of the Department of Emergency Services.

Wolgemuth stated the County Treasurer and Prothonotary – two of the most visited offices by county residents – will remain in their current locations in proximity to each other on the first floor down the hall from the security checkpoint.

A few unknowns to be addressed in the coming months will determine the direction the project goes from a financial standpoint. A prominent reason is that it’s unknown how much asbestos remediation is needed within certain areas, including the space formerly occupied by Lebanon City Police at the south end of the building.

That’s why the cost of the project has such a wide variable between just over $5 million to $7.4 million, according to Wolgemuth. There’s another factor that may influence how much of the project gets completed.

“Something else which may impact the scope of this is Children & Youth Services, … (which) applied for some of their state funding, some of their allocation, to be given for renovations,” Wolgemuth said.

As of publication, that funding request has not been granted by state officials, he added.

“That’s not been approved. Now, we’ve taken another run at it this time, when they submitted their budget back in October. But if that doesn’t come through at all, then we either have to come up with that extra money from the county, which we didn’t really account for, or we have to downsize the scope of it (the project), which would mean basically utilizing more existing than we were going to do.”

That potential CYS funding, which Wolgemuth estimated to be about $1 million, along with remaining (ARPA) funding of about $4 million would cover the lower end of the projected costs for the municipal building’s renovations. 

Bob Dowd, director of the Department of Emergency Services, said his department recently returned to the county $500,000 after the emergency communications tower project plan was revised from 11 to 8 towers. That remaining funding is being applied to this project, according to Wolgemuth.

While several questions, especially around funding remain, one thing is certain: the project financing involving ARPA funding must be expensed by Dec. 31, 2026, when all ARPA dollars must be spent by county officials or returned to the federal government.

Although it is highly unlikely that any funds will be returned, Wolgemuth knows the clock is ticking to spend the balance before the clock strikes midnight next New Year’s Eve.

“It’s ambitious,” Wolgemuth said. “It will have to be reported by January ’27.”

Unless those ARPA dollars are gone long before the end of 2026, which is a possibility.

“Depending on some of the bids to come in, we may end up going through the ARPA money and then having to make some decisions on how and when we’re gonna do the remaining renovations,” Wolgemuth said.