The Sullivan Town Council has been talking for a couple of years about what they are going to do about their growing need for space. Lady luck smiled on the town earlier this year with the Chittenango Veterans’ Club donation of the American Legion on Mohawk Street at Legion Drive.
The council hired an architectural firm at its last meeting to evaluate the town’s space needs and develop a plan to rearrange work areas to give employees adequate space. Part of the plan includes expanded space for the state police substation currently housed in the northern end of town hall.
Supervisor John M. Becker (R,C,I — Sullivan) said the town’s preliminary ideas include expanding the large meeting room into the historian’s space. The historian would be moved elsewhere, possibly to the residential space on the east side of Lakeport Road across from the Parks & Recreation Department building.
The small courtroom at the northern end of the building needs to be doubled in size, Becker said, a scenario made possible by the relocation of the state troopers’ facilities to the existing parks building, which would be renovated to the needs of the police substation. The renovation to that building, Becker said, would ideally include the construction of a four-bay garage, three bays for the troopers and one double-deep bay for the town’s ambulance service.
“They could stack the ambulances in there two deep,” Becker said.
Two of the police bays would have doors on each end, allowing troopers to pull into the garage from the existing town hall parking lot area and pull out onto Lakeport Road. The two single-bay garage bays would have access only from Lakeport Road, due to the shape of the property to the south end of the building.
The parks operations would be relocated to the Legion building in the village. The parks now hosts the county’s SNACK program for seniors three times a week, and Parks Director Justin Pokines said there is a possibility that could be expanded to five days a week in the new facility.
“The plan is to do this in several phases,” Becker said to architect Frederick Koenig of William Taylor Architects. “We’d like to rehab the vets’ building ASAP, maybe by September, and get the parks people out of its building.”
With the parks building empty, work could then begin on expanding facilities for the state police, Becker said. The number of troopers stationed in town hall has grown from four to six to 10 during the past 18 months, and, according to Becker, plans are to expand that number to 13, with a mix of patrol and investigative staff to be stationed there as soon as the space is ready.
Rural-Metro Ambulance Service, which provides the town’s emergency medical services, is housed in the North Chittenango Fire Department. Chief Dennis “Howie” Simmons has repeatedly asked that the ambulance be removed from his building due to space constraints and utility bills.
Koenig will develop a plan and projected costs for the renovations.
The Sullivan Town Council meets again July 16 at 9 a.m. in the large conference room.
