By Charley Falkenburg, Special Writer
MANSFIELD — The sun hadn’t been up a full hour yet and John McDonnell already was inside the new Millennium Building, standing atop a raised platform with a drill in his right hand.
Clad in a roomy green sweatshirt and faded blue jeans, the supervisor for Fasolino Contracting Corp. Inc., of Sewell, was hard at work with his crew to get the place up and running.
For Mr. McDonnell, they are just sheet rock, tape, paint, a ceiling, floors and doors from finishing up the municipal headquarters, which spans 15,300 square feet on the first floor. The entire two-story facility is 60,000 square feet and sits on the southbound side of Route 206, just a little past Hedding Road.
”The municipal portion is about 85 percent done,” Mr. McDonnell confirmed. “We’re just down to the finishing touches now.”
Men in sweatshirts, dusty work boots and hard hats moved throughout the doorless rooms, working on those finishing touches Mr. McDonnell mentioned. Some could be seen hammering at the walls, some were kneeling down taking measurements, and others were scaling ladders to tend to the ceiling.
Ten months into the renovation, their combined efforts revealed an interior that finally resembled all of the soon-to-be town offices and the brand new courtroom, which people will enter by passing through a metal detector. Although still cluttered with ladders, tools and endless wooden boards, one now could visualize each department’s headquarters — that is, with a little help from a knowledgeable guide such as Deputy Mayor Bob Higgins.
Mr. Higgins has been at the forefront of this project since last year. He and Committeeman Sean Gable have been overseeing the building and its maintenance since construction began in June 2012. While an average person might be clueless as to what he was looking at, Mr. Higgins whisked through the building as if he were one of the construction workers, pointing out all the rooms by heart.
From the judge’s chambers and administration offices to the bulletproof walls that will separate employees from offenders paying their traffic tickets, Mr. Higgens was able to give each room a face and name.
Walking through the glass door entrance on the right side of the building, one immediately sees the clerk’s office on the right. Next to the clerk’s office is a long hallway that leads to various department areas such as land use, construction, recreation and finance.
Near the center is the courtroom, which is to be shared between Mansfield and Springfield, and toward the back are storage rooms that may turn into a senior center in the future when the town has more money to spare.
The new complex already is costing Mansfield close to $10 million, and the town has been struggling to pay for it since the beginning. At one point, the project came to a complete halt for most of November 2012 because the town did not have enough money and needed another bond ordinance.
To date, the committee has approved three bond ordinances to keep the project going — one to buy the building, one to start the renovations and one to finish the work.
Once everyone is moved into the new Route 206 location, the town plans on selling the old buildings on Main Street to help pay off the large debt the project has incurred. Mr. Higgins was uncertain of how much they would sell for, but said their recent state-approved Waste Water Management Plan, which gives sewers to Columbus, had increased the value of the properties.
Although Mr. Higgins thinks the municipal portion should be ready as soon as the end of February, he was excited more for the town, he noted.
”This is long overdue,” Mr. Higgins said. “Once it’s finished, it will be better for the township to have all the departments in one place.”
Once completed, the municipal headquarters, Police Department and volunteer Franklin Fire Company, which already occupies the north side of the complex, will be united under one roof for the first time ever.
However, delays from bond ordinances haven’t been the only things giving Mr. Higgins a headache. He and the committee have been vocal about a few of the other snags the facility has experienced during its construction phase.
Just two weeks ago, frustrations mounted when the committee learned the countertops in the clerk, land use and construction offices all were made too short.
The original plan was to build standard height counter tops with a designated area for shorter ones to satisfy the building accessibility requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. However, at the December meeting, Township Engineer Tim Stazewski said at some point it was interpreted to make everything ADA accessible.
Fasolino, the main contractor for the building, had made the countertops, but were going off the drawings from Remington and Vernick Engineers.
”There was a misunderstanding on what the clerks thought they were going to get compared with what was installed,” Mr. McDonnell said, pausing from his work.
Apparently, the issue abated once the employees saw the actual counters, eliminating the need to spend more to fix them.
”Once they saw them (the counters), they were all right with the way they turned out,” Mr. McDonnell added. “They didn’t think they were that short.”
Then there were the change orders, another time-consuming necessary evil.
Mr. Higgins wasn’t particularly a fan of going through the slew of change orders — about 45 since the project started — since it slows the process down, but said, sometimes, they proved to be beneficial. For instance, Mansfield was able to save $9,000 by switching to energy-efficient lighting.
The municipal part may be near the finish line, but there is still a lot of work left to do. The township just started the drawings for the remaining two departments, police and Public Works, and soon will go out to bid for them.
Mansfield also is negotiating with American Water, which owns the property on the side of the building, so it can put a 60-foot right of way so people can enter the complex from Hedding Road.
As Mr. Higgins exited the new Millennium Building, he emphasized he was very pleased with all the contractors and engineers involved in the process. Although he previously had criticized Remington and Vernick and the construction errors, he explained he was overall happy with them.
However, Mr. Higgins noted his job isn’t to pat everyone on the back, but to push them to make sure their job gets done right.
”Someone has to push them,” he added. “There needs to be a driving force between them (engineers) and the contractors, and I have taken that role.”

