The ribbon has been cut and Lycoming County government offices that had been located at Executive Plaza are now open for business at their new location, on the third floor of Third Street Plaza (TSP), 33 W.Third St.

Services under the Joinder Board will move to their new location on TSP’s fourth floor next month.

“We went into the Executive Plaza in May, 1988. Over time we had outgrown that building. It was time to move on,” said Commissioner Scott Metzger, sharing a bit of history with the crowd of people who had come to the commissioners’ board room to witness the grand opening of the offices at TSP.

The discussion had become that the county owned too much real estate and that there were too many unleased spaces.

RALPH WILSON/Sun-Gazette Correspondent Lycoming County Commissioners have moved to 33 West Third Street in Williamsport as shown on Thursday, July 11, 2024.

“Floors were sitting empty. We were paying for floors to be heated, for the electricity and the air conditioning and so we started to put a plan together to sell that building,” Metzger said.

After receiving several bids and Horizon Federal Credit Union ended up as the top bidder, purchasing the building for $3.6 million, well above the asking price.

“The nice thing about it is the building is now back on the tax rolls and there’s a hundred corporate jobs coming to downtown Williamsport,” Metzger said.

The move by the Joinder to TSP means that there will no longer be a $40,000 rent payment for the Sharwell Building.

Part of that money will go to rent at TSP to help pay down the bond on that building with the remaining money going back into services offered by the Joinder, such as mental health.

RALPH WILSON/Sun-Gazette Correspondent Past and current Lycoming County Commissioners cut a ribbon to mark the opening of their new offices on Thursday, July 11, 2024. Shown from left are current commissioners Marc C. Sortman, Mark Mussina, Scott L. Metzger and past commissioners Tony Mussare and Ernie Larson.

There were also cost-saving measures in the design of the third floor with Metzger pointing out that money was saved by deciding to go with a less costly lighting in the hallways. The cost of running the more expensive lights would have been equal to electricity for three floors.The commissioners nixed that.

“We’re no different than our employees, with the same lighting. We want everything to be clean and fresh. Things cost enough as it is, we don’t need to have additional expenses,” Metzger said.

A savings is also expected because the building is more energy efficient with LED light, new air conditioning and heating. One feature that was highlighted on the tour of the third floor was the enhanced security system that was built into the design of the space.

Once the decision for the move was made, each of the departments sat down with the architect, Tony Visco, to design the most efficient use for their space.

“Each staff member made the decision on what would best utilize (their space) in the future,” Metzger said.

“You’ll see if you go around how fluid it is to have all these offices on one floor. It’s so much more efficient for our customers, and for our staff for the years to come,” Metzger said.

Also after the decision came the planning of how to not only renovate the spaces at TSP, but also how to move all the offices without totally disrupting the county doing business. In all the planning of the move took about a month, according to Ken George, director of facilities management.

For about three days last month, 15 people worked at making the transition from one building to the other.

“It was done during work hours, but we would get a certain number of people over here and set up before we would take the rest of them down over there,” George said.

“Nobody was ever actually off-line, not working or not servicing the people,” he added.

The order of what department would move when, meeting with department heads and the people there and how things needed to be packed up were all part of the month of planning in order to facilitate the move.

“It worked out really well. A lot of planning made for easier work,” George said.

To provide for an efficient layout of the office spaces, George said, it was important to decide which offices needed to be next to each other prior to the actual design of the spaces by the architect.

But, there is still work to be done at the site with about half of the first floor yet to be done. It is also not certain what the space will be used for.

The second floor of the building currently houses Veterans’ Affairs, and the fifth floor has the assessment, IT, maintenance and facilities departments as well as server rooms and backup 911.