LIMA — Allen County Buildings and Grounds crew member Jim Vaske applies a fresh coat of eggshell white paint to the walls of the former commissioners office in the Allen County Courthouse. Two office walls have already been moved and baseboards and doors have already been painted brown covering the old battleship gray paint.
In the next couple of weeks, Commissioner Cory Noonan said Thursday, he believes the rooms should be ready or close to being finished to serve as the new home for probate court. He said it could be longer because they never assigned a definitive timeline on when the move had to take place.
“Renovations of the third floor are going very well,” Noonan said after the commissioners meeting. “There has been a considerable amount of work done. Walls have been removed and new walls have been put up. It doesn’t look like the commissioners office any more.
“I think the judge and his staff are very happy with the decor and the layout of the third floor is going to be,” the commissioner said. “Our former office, which probate is going to come down to is going to be significantly smaller than the fourth floor, but I think it will be a good fit.”
The commissioners are renovating their former office space at a cost not to exceed $35,000 to house probate court. The court’s move from the fourth floor will enable construction crews to work on the roof and clock tower, which is leaking and damaging the courthouse structure. If the courtroom was maintained on the fourth floor, crews working likely would have disrupted proceedings.
Whether the move is temporary or permanent also has yet to be decided.
Noonan said the commissioners have discussed possibly moving juvenile court to the courthouse, either in the former commissioners chambers on the third floor or on the fourth floor after renovations are complete and if probate court decides to stay on the third floor
“We want to be using our space, county space, to the best of our abilities,” Noonan said. “We are looking at recalibrating the space that we have and using those offices in the best interests of the county. There have been discussions about the potential use of the fourth floor — would probate go back up there, could juvenile fit into the fourth floor, but we have to wait until the judge and probate comes down to the third floor to see if that fits.”
The commissioners received an update Thursday from Buildings and Grounds Supervisor Dana Sterling about courthouse renovations. He said Garmann-Miller & Associates engineers recently picked up another set of drawings. They have been contracted, at an amount not to exceed $50,000, to provide to complete a feasibility study and to provide recommendations on saving the clock tower or to remove the clock tower as well as ways to repair the roof and to renovate the fourth floor.
“They have completed their preliminary inspections and they are crunching their final numbers,” Sterling said.
The clock tower renovation project is not to expected to exceed $350,000.
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