News

Possible site found for coroner’s facility

The search for a building to house the Lycoming County Coroner's facility may be over as it has been confirmed that the commissioners have chosen a building on Wahoo Drive as the possible site.

The building at 3341 Wahoo Drive, which is owned by the Pennsylvania College of Technology, was approved for sale by the college's board of directors last week. It is a two-acre parcel with an 8,000 square foot, high bay building.

"I can confirm that that's the building," said commissioner Rick Mirabito.

"The reason we hadn't identified it was we wanted to make sure that Penn College had a chance to talk to their board," Mirabito said.

He indicated as yet there are no details as to price or anything else that he knows of.

When contacted, County Coroner Chuck Kiessling said that he could not confirm anything.

"I have not seen or heard anything definite. I knew there were talks about that building, but the commissioners haven't said anything to me definitely," Kiessling said, although he had heard there had been discussions with Penn College about the building.

"I saw an email about a letter of intent to purchase, but I've not heard anything about what the appraisal value is or

whether there's anything about monetary transactions to purchase the building," Kiessling said.

When asked if this property would meet the needs of the coroner's facility, Kiessling admitted that it probably would not meet every need.

"I don't think it's going to meet all the needs without a significant expansion on the building," Kiessling said.

"It will get us a garage facility so we could store vehicles in one location instead of scattering them around the county," he said.

The building would also give the coroner's office space to store supplies, which Kiessling said are currently at five different locations.

"It's a challenge trying to keep track of where things are right now. A lot of it is wasted time running around to get everything we need sometimes," he said.

"The worst part is during the winter months we have no place to decontaminate vehicles, no place to shower and change clothes before we go home to our families," Kiessling said.

Another requirement that Kiessling noted was easy access to the beltway and other major highways.

"The Lundy building would have been much better, but that ship has sailed," Kiessling said.

"It's going to require an expansion, probably for morgue space. If we bring in a forensic pathologist to do autopsies, that's going to be an addition to the existing footprint that's already there," he said.

Currently Kiessling's staff travels to Allentown for autopsies.

A feasibility study done in 2012, Kiessling said, suggested 15,000 square feet would be needed to house the coroner's facility -- almost double the size of the Wahoo Drive building.

Some services that had been considered for the building have been located elsewhere, so the size needed would be less.

"We can shave some of the needs off of that 15,000 square foot building, but I still think we're in the probably 12,000 square feet needed, so we're probably going to be four-to-five-thousand square feet short on space to really do what was suggested in the feasibility study," Kiessling said.

The study had identified the needs for the facility as evidence storage; showers, lockers, autopsy rooms, storage areas for supplies, office space, space for vehicles with enough room to move around and load and unload and decontaminate the trucks, and space for two mass fatality trailers.

"I think there's going to be a fairly sizable buildout if we're going to do all this stuff, and if we bring a forensic pathologist here to do autopsies for the region, we need to have more than just one autopsy room," he said.

When asked if the building has the potential to fit the needs of the office, Kiessling replied, "It certainly would work. It's not a bad location. It's kind of off the beaten path, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's not something that you want in downtown Williamsport."

"This certainly can work, depending on what the purchase price is and what the commissioners are willing to spend for renovations," he said.

"I hate to just buy a building to park vehicles in and still have our scattered situation we're operating under now," he said.

Mirabito agreed with Kiessling that the space would have to be increased to meet all of the coroner's needs.

"We could get him in there for some stuff immediately, but eventually it would need an additional build-out. I think that's my understanding too," Mirabito said.

The original intent of the coroner's facility was to also house a district justice office and a space to meet the coroner's needs. Because of the size of the Wahoo Drive property, Mirabito said that the other services might need to be moved elsewhere.

"I'm certain we haven't ruled out trying to figure out what we need to build out and how much space is available to see if we can meet some other needs," Mirabito said.

"It isn't right-off-the-bat big enough. I doubt that we could do all the things we had hoped to do there, but we will certainly see what can be done," he added.