New town hall opening hits snags

EAST HAMPTON — The scheduled opening of the new town hall building has been delayed, due to a “combination of factors,” the town manager said this week.

Town officials initially hoped the building would be ready by April 1. Then they hoped it would ready by Easter weekend, April 12.

Now, however, officials are “pushing back the opening by a month,” Town Manager David E. Cox told the Town Council this week.

The new target date for when the building will open to the public now is at noon May 11, Cox said.

“A combination of factors” is causing the delay, Cox said. Among those are the numerous “punch-list” items that can occur on any project, he

said, as well as delays that can be attributed to the coronavirus pandemic.

Some vendors and suppliers working on the project “have either had to shut down or there is a limited availability” for some of the items needed for the new building, he said.

Still other delays, he said, are the routine things that happen during any building or renovation project.

“A number of weeks were built into the original schedule as ‘buffers,’” Cox said Wednesday. “We’re using some of those buffers now.”

Even when the building is complete and staff has moved in, there still will be some items that will need to be addressed, Cox said, such as various technical equipment.

Cox also said it will be especially important to get the clerk’s office up and running as soon as possible, as it’s the repository for all the town’s vital statistic and land records.

It is difficult to get around in some offices now, Cox said, as the various department heads prepare for the impending move. In the officer of Director of Finance Jeffrey M. Jylkka, for example, roughly half of the files have been packed.

An even once work is completed, the planned grand opening will have to be delayed until such time when “it will be appropriate for large groups,” Cox said. At present, Gov. Ned Lamont has asked residents to avoid groups of more than 5 people.

There will a slight interruption in governmental functions during the changeover from the present building to the new one, Cox acknowledged.

Under the present schedule, Town Hall will close to the public at noon May 7, Cox said.

Town employees will be responsible for clearing their desk of all their personal items, and the town has hired a professional hauler, Manchester Moving, to move the furniture to the new location, Cox said.

The new 34,000-squarefoot building is located inside the Edgewater Hills mixed-use development, roughly a mile east of the present Town Hall. The building will house police headquarters and the Board of Education in addition to the town offices.

The cost of the new building is $18.9 million.