Visitors to the city’s construction code office won’t have to schlep up two flights of stairs anymore. The office, which houses a nine-member team of inspectors charged with ensuring that buildings in town are up to standards laid out by the state, has been moved from the third floor of City Hall to a sparkling new office on the first floor. A ribbon cutting ceremony for the new office, which boasts a wide counter, three private offices and a kitchen, was held on Wednesday.
“I walked into work today and said ‘how could I have worked up there?'” said Al Arezzo, the city’s building inspector and construction supervisor, of his old third floor office. Arezzo has worked in the construction code office for 29 years.
“It’s like a dungeon up there,” continued Arezzo. “As we begin the 21st century, I’m happy to finally be moving to a place that is fit for the 20th.”
The new office, which is laid out in a loft-like style complete with a spiral staircase that leads to mounds of maps and engineering documents, was once used as the city’s water department office. But a public-private partnership that was signed with United Water in the mid-1990s made the water office obsolete.
In recent months, city carpenters have worked to modernize the area. With the help of part-time laborers, a new floor was laid down, a steel beam was erected to support the walk-up area, and finishing touches reminiscent of some of the newly constructed apartments in town were added.
Michael Korman, the city’s public information director, said that using city carpenters to do the work, rather than bidding the project out to a contractor, had saved the city “a lot of money.” Korman did not have a guess as to how much.
As dozens of city employees and local business people swarmed around the free food that was being handed out as a part of the ribbon cutting ceremony, Korman said, “its always like this in here. According to information provided to us by the state, we have the third most active construction code office in New Jersey.”
The new office also includes a computer system which should make it easier to process paperwork, city officials said. To date almost all of the office’s procedures were handled without the aid of computers. The new computer system should cut down on the amount of time it takes to send paperwork to the state office in Trenton and receive a response.
“Now everything will go out over a modem,” said Korman. “Whereas before it was all by hand. I think that is going to speed things up.”
The office for Hispanic and multi-cultural affairs moved into the construction code office’s old quarters on the third floor, city officials added.