Borden Building: Not Quite Yet

The $7.2 million Borden Building renovation has hit a bump in the road. The renovations had been scheduled for completion on Oct. 1, but the work will not be completed on time.

“No set date has been made yet for completion,” said Greg Baderschneider, Director of Parks, Buildings and Grounds for the city. “We’re hoping sometime within the next month.”

Restoration of the historic building began in November 2005, when voters approved the sale of City Hall with the proceeds to be used to help pay for the Borden Building’s renovations.

During this span, many renovations have been done to preserve and improve this building.

“It’s been totally retrofitted to fit the city’s needs,” said Greg Baderschneider, Director of Parks, Buildings and Grounds for the city. “Anything you can imagine going into office space is what’s going in there.”

Some of the building’s interior work includes painting, electrical lighting and final communicative data services said Baderschneider.

“We’ll have better work space,” Baderschneider said. “Commission chambers will be more conducive to televising meetings.”

A media area is being installed in those commission chambers to publicize meetings, along with an observation window looking on from the second-level office space.

“What makes that nice is if staff needs to see what’s going on, they can go see it through the window,” Baderschneider said.

The building renovations also give the city employees more activities to do before and after work.

Employees will have access to a gym on the first floor, consisting of treadmills and Boflex machines, and a catwalk, inaccessible to the public, will be built on the second floor out to Broadway Street.

The renovations to Borden Building will offer many changes to the city employees and the new headquarters are something they all can’t wait to move into to, but that will have to wait also.

“Once they give us a date, we’ll give a two-week window to move in,” Baderschneider said.

Plans are also underway for an open house celebration soon after the move is complete. The entire community is invited to join in the dedication of the new City Hall in the restored Borden Building. Tours will be conducted and light refreshments served following the dedication.

More information regarding the specific date and time of the open house to celebrate the restoration of this remarkable piece of our community’s history can be found at www.mt-pleasant.org.