It’s not quite a finished product, but the new Robinson Township Municipal Complex is officially open for business.
Well, at least most of it is.
The 30,000-square-foot building, which at one time was part of the Calgon Carbon Corp. holdings and later was a Scholastic Aptitude Test center, has an official address of 5440 Campbells Run Road, but also can be accessed off Route 60/Steubenville Pike.
The building is just over half the size of the previous municipal complex on Church Hill Road, which served the township for about 25 years, but officials say it will be more efficient because nearly half of the previous building sat empty for the most part. The new building also will have nearly three times the parking that the old complex had.
The new complex will feature township offices, a Board of Commissioners meeting room, the township library, the Robinson Township Historical Society, several classrooms and 12,000-square-feet of indoor recreational space.
The Board of Commissioners meeting room will see its first action at 7 p.m. Monday , and among the items up for discussion is a controversial rezoning request for property on South Petrie Road.
The 12,000 square feet of indoor recreational space will include three to four pickleball courts, a half-court basketball configuration and a mechanical divider to partition off a portion of the space for other activities, said Jen Yuvan, the township’s Parks and Recreation director.
Township officials first began contemplating a new municipal complex nearly a decade ago when the building on Church Hill Road, which had several previous uses prior to becoming the township municipal building, began “showing its age and wear and tear,” said Ron Shiwarski, chairman of the Board of Commissioners.
Shiwarski said eight years ago, the township began weighing its options, among them staying put and undertaking a remodeling project, tearing it down and building a new structure, acquiring property and erecting a new building or buying an existing building.
They looked at the building at 5440 Campbells Run Road, but at the time, the owners were more interested in leasing.
Shiwarski said that didn’t line up with the township’s long-range plan. “We came back around a year or so later and they were willing to discuss a purchase,” he said. “That started making sense to us.”
Shiwarski said the township began budgeting for the new building years ago as part of a multiphase capital project plan, which included some park facilities, the police station and emergency services facility as well as some upgrades to the township’s public works campus.
The building that now houses the new municipal complex cost $6,250,000 and Shiwarski emphasized that the township did not raise taxes to complete the purchase, which was finalized early last year.
“That was paramount to our decision to go ahead with the new building – that we could do it within our (existing) budget at our current tax structure,” Shiwarski said.
The interior of the building required a fair amount of reworking, but most of that work was built into the purchase agreement. Shiwarski said the previous owner “customized to what our needs were. We worked jointly with them as part of the purchase to make it fit our needs.”
What Shiwarski said he and other township officials liked was the fact that the new complex is essentially a blank slate.
“There’s no limit to what we can do – nothing restricting our vision,” Shiwarski said. “That was one of the attractions. It was a wide-open canvas to fit our needs.”
Shiwarski said Robinson Township has a nice array of outdoor gathering places such as its three main parks, but the new municipal complex, with its indoor recreational facilities, will add a much-needed element.
“Robinson Township is a community that doesn’t have a Main Street,” he said. “This won’t take the place of a Main Street, but it’s something that can be a social hub for our community.”
The library alone will have much more room than the old one. At about 6,700 square feet, it’s almost double the size of the library on Church Hill Road, and that should allow room for more programs, educational and otherwise.
“Libraries aren’t just a place where you check out a book anymore,” Shiwarski said.
Patrons will reach the library through the main building entrance, but Shiwarski said it will have “sort of a separate wing of the building. So, it’ll have the feel and atmosphere of being autonomous.”
While portions of the municipal building are completed, some are a ways off. The recreation space, for example, isn’t quite ready yet, and as of Friday, the spacious foyer remained mostly empty. Eventually it will contain tables and chairs and a video screen displaying information about township events.
But come 10 a.m. Monday, the new library will be open for business.
Gabby Beikrassouli, a youth services librarian, said she and the rest of the staff were looking forward to Monday morning. All library programs were temporarily suspended as of March 17 while workers prepared for the move.
“It’s been hard not seeing our families,” she said.
The library will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Library programming, however, won’t start until the summer reading program gets under way June 9. “That will give us time to finalize everything,” Beikrassouli said.
There will be no such delay when it comes to the Board of Commissioners getting to work, as the board’s first monthly meeting there will take place Monday evening.
Among the items on the agenda is a request from Dale Vietmeier to rezone property on South Petrie Road from single-family residential to multifamily residential.
That item has attracted plenty of interest from a number of residents in that area, several of whom contend the property already features several structures that were built without permits.
Many of the neighbors are concerned that multifamily zoning could lead to traffic, noise and other issues that would detract from the neighborhood’s quality of life – not to mention people’s property values.
Dave Williams, who lives on South Petrie Road, said at the April Board of Commissioners meeting that approving the switch from single-family residential to multifamily residential would constitute what he called “spot zoning” and that’s considered “illegal and a poor planning practice.”
Williams argued that the rezone would benefit one person – the applicant – and no one else in the neighborhood.
Santo Bonadio, another South Petrie Road resident, told the board last month that he and his neighbors want no part of any multifamily residential development.
“This is a nice, quiet, established neighborhood with nice houses that have big lots on a dead-end street,” he said.
“We’ve come out and expressed opposition time and again and here we are having to defend it again. There are people who’ve been here for years, and we do not want this.”
Vietmeier, who chose not to comment when asked about the neighbors’ concerns following last month’s Board of Commissioners meeting, applied to the township’s Zoning Hearing Board for a variance that would have allowed him to operate one of the structures on the property as a multifamily dwelling, but that board denied his request at its April 23 meeting.
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