Highlands Weighs Cost of a New Borough Hall

By Philip Sean Curran

HIGHLANDS – This coastal community, still recovering seven years after Super Storm Sandy, could have to spend $9 million or more to pay for a new borough hall to replace the municipal government building damaged by the storm and later demolished.

Building a new government center at a new site, situated at the former convent for Our Lady of Perpetual Help and a church thrift shop along Route 36 and Miller Street, could cost between $5 million and $7 million. Added expenses include the cost of demolishing the old building, buying the land for the new one and paying for other related costs, like furnishings.

During a public meeting Sept. 25 when officials updated residents on this and other capital projects underway in the community, a resident pressed officials on the potential cost of a new borough hall.

“We don’t have the exact cost yet,” Mayor Rick O’Neil said, adding it “may very well could be” a $9 million project. “That’s what could be presented to us,” he said.

Then we have to decide where to go from there.”

After the meeting, the borough revised the construction estimate, bumping up estimated ranges from $5 million to $7 million to as much as $6 million to $8 million, when factoring in site work and requirements to meet state codes and standards. That could potentially push the total cost to more than $9 million.

Old borough hall at 171 Bay Ave. was a fixture in this Bayshore hamlet for decades. Built in the early 1960s, it was where people came to pay their taxes or complain about potholes at borough council meetings.

But during Sandy, the building took in two feet of water in some parts. The building was deemed to be too expensive to renovate and bring up to codes and standards, so local officials have turned their attention to building a new borough hall.

The borough hired architect Kevin M. Settembrino, also a Middletown Township committeeman, for the project. At last week’s public meeting, he walked the community through the design and other details of the two-story, roughly 15,000-square-foot structure.

In terms of paying for it all, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be contributing about $2 million, an amount representing federal recovery aid for the community, that the borough will use to construct the building. The rest will come from the borough selling bonds and repaying the debt over a long period of time, potentially 30 years.

Borough councilwoman and mayoral candidate Carolyn Broullon stressed the importance of the investment officials are making for a building that will serve the community for decades. The new building will be home to all government operations, except the fire department and first aid squad.

“We’re not building this for 10 years, we’re not building it for 20,” she said. “We’re building this for 70 years. This is going to be with us for a long time and we want to get it right.”

“I think it’s going to be a nice building, I think it’ll be aesthetically pleasing to the public as they drive by and we have to have it,” council president Rosemary Ryan said after the meeting.

The new building will be on high ground, a decision that officials made intentionally.

“People keep saying they want it downtown,” Ryan said. “But this…should be sustainable for 100 years. If it was downtown, it’s not going to be sustainable for 100 years. You’d be lucky if it’s sustainable for five years.”

Work is expected to begin in 2020.

“I’m thinking, maybe, after the first of the year,” O’Neil said when asked about when a 16-to-18-month-long job might start construction.

In the meantime, municipal staff have been working in trailers.

The old borough hall was demolished in August. Officials intend to turn the land where it stood into a 51-space parking lot.

This month marks the seventh anniversary of Sandy striking the state, a storm that wreaked havoc in Monmouth County in particular. Highlands was among the communities hit hard.

Broullon, a local businesswoman, said she saw symbolic value for the community when the new borough hall opens.

“This will be a big win for us as a borough,” she said. “It will be like, ‘Look at us, we’re back. We are back.’ ”

In nearby Sea Bright, officials there spent $12 million to build a new beach pavilion and library, also designed by Settembrino, and a municipal building. The pavilion already opened, while the other building is mostly completed, Mayor Dina Long said.

“To me it’s very symbolic and meaningful that reconstruction of municipal facilities happened while I’m still in office,” said Long, in her last term. She said it is “something that we’ve been working really hard on for many years now.”