Bradford County to purchase Valley Wood Works building for $140,000 for district court, county offices, district court

BY JAMES LOEWENSTEIN

TOWANDA - Bradford County will purchase the 11,000 square-foot, three-story Valley Wood Works building in downtown Towanda, which will be used to house the Towanda District Court, the Bradford County Penn State Cooperative Extension office, the Bradford-Wyoming County Literacy Program office, and two county offices, the Bradford County commissioners announced Thursday.

The Bradford County commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to purchase the building for $140,000.

The owners of the building, Charles and Pamela Emerson of Wysox, had previously approved the terms of the sale, said Mark Smith, chairman of the Bradford County commissioners.

The county will also spend approximately $300,000 to renovate the building, which is located at 200 Main St., Smith said.

The Bradford County Veterans Affairs Office and the Bradford County maintenance office, both of which are located in "very small" quarters in the Bradford County Courthouse in Towanda, will move into the Valley Wood Works building, where they will have additional space, said Doug McLinko, Bradford County commissioner.

"I think this (purchase) will be a great thing for the taxpayers," McLinko said, adding that the county had previously been looking at spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus renovation costs, to buy a building into which the Towanda District Court could move.

"We would have spent the same or more money, just for the district justice's office," he said. "We're doing so many things (by purchasing and renovating the Valley Wood Works building) and we'll probably spend the same or less money than to get just one office up and running."

The county commissioners have been looking for many years to find a new location for the Towanda District Court, whose current quarters at 701 Fourth St. in Towanda are cramped, damp, and have inadequate security, said the court's judge, Towanda Magisterial District Judge Timothy Clark.

"The district justice (the Towanda District Court) is in the basement on Fourth Street," McLinko said. "It is an old school building and the basement is wet. We've been looking for a place to get him out of there. In the new building, there will be much better security (for Clark's office and court)."

The district court will also have more usable space in the Valley Wood Works building, McLinko said.

Moving the Veterans Affairs Office and the maintenance office to the Valley Wood Works building will help address a lack of space in the Bradford County Courthouse, where many county offices are located, Smith said.

"This place (the courthouse) is bursting at the seams," he said.

To save money, the "vast majority" of the renovations will be done by county employees, Smith said.

The county plans to begin the renovations in the coming weeks and complete them by the end of 2010, he said.

The county plans to hire two employees for a year to work on the renovations, Smith said.

Last June, Valley Wood Works, which builds custom-made cabinets and counters, moved out of the building and is now located in Wysox Township.

The new arrangement will allow the county to completely vacate the building at 701 Fourth St., which currently also houses the Bradford County Penn State Cooperative Extension office, McLinko said.

The county has been looking for the past few years to move out of the building at 701 Fourth St., which has high utility bills and maintenance costs, he said.

The county is required to provide a county office for Penn State Cooperative Extension, McLinko explained.

Fourth Street

The Towanda Area School District, which owns the building at 701 Fourth St., will presumably sell the building, which will put it back on the tax rolls, McLinko said.

Currently, the county pays $15,000 a year in utility bills at 701 Fourth St. and has to maintain the building, said McLinko, who added that the county hopes to pay only $10,000 to $12,000 in utility bills at the Valley Wood Works building.

The Towanda District Court will be located on the first floor of Valley Wood Works building, the county maintenance office will move into the building's second floor, and the Penn State Cooperative Extension office, the literacy program and the Veterans Affairs Office will be on the third floor, McLinko said.

The building will be handicapped-accessible, because the second and third floors of the building are accessible from the sidewalk along State Street, the commissioners said. The section of State Street that is next to the Valley Wood Works building is steeply sloped.

The county plans to use 4,000 to 5,000 square feet of the second floor of the Valley Wood Works building for storage, including storage of documents and records, McLinko said.

The need for storage space is "critically important to us," McLinko said. "We're running out of it."

Currently, the county is leasing some storage space, Bradford County Fiscal Director Joan Sanderson said.

The county has had architects evaluate the Valley Wood Works building to make sure it is structurally sound, McLinko said.

The building is sound, he said.

"The building is incredibly built," McLinko said. "You could put a tank on the second floor. It's that structurally sound."

The county had two appraisals done of the Valley Wood Works building, and both appraisals are higher than the sale price, McLinko said.

"We negotiated a really good price" for the building, McLinko said.

The new quarters for the Towanda District Court will include a holding cell for prisoners and conference rooms where attorneys can speak privately with clients, McLinko said. The current location of the district court does not provide those facilities, and prisoners have to wait in the courtroom when their hearing is not taking place, Clark said.

"It's a security nightmare" at 701 Fourth St., county Commissioner John Sullivan said.

Currently, the literacy program occupies an office in the Bradford County Library in West Burlington Township, as well as approximately 500 additional square feet of space in the library that is cordoned off for the program's use, McLinko said.

Moving the literacy program to the Valley Wood Works building "will give the Bradford County Library more usable space without getting into a bricks-and-mortar (expansion)" of the library, McLinko said.

The literacy program "is not something that needs to be at the library," he said.

Officials from the library have said they need more space in the library building.

The upgrades to the Valley Wood Works building will include upgrades to the building's exterior, McLinko said.

In an interview, Clark said he had not seen the plans for locating the district court in the new building.

"I'm excited about having an office on Main Street in Towanda," which will be easier for people to find than the office on Fourth Street, he said. "I'm looking forward to the move."

However, both he and Gary Hennip, the director of the Bradford County Penn State Cooperative Extension Office, said in interviews that they are concerned that the Valley Wood Works building will not provide enough space for parking.

At the meeting, McLinko had said that there would approximately seven parking spaces on the Valley Wood Works property at the front of the building that will be used for the district court, which would be adequate to meet the court's needs.

In addition, the county has notified the owner of Bradford County Human Services building at 218-220 Main St. that it may exercise its option to purchase the building, Smith said.

If the county purchased the Human Services building, it would also obtain, as part of the purchase, the parking lot that is located behind both the Human Services Building and the Valley Wood Works building, and people who use the Valley Wood Works building would have access to that parking lot, too, Smith said.

James Loewenstein can be reached at (570) 265-1633; or e-mail: jloewenstein@thedailyreview.com.

Sign up for Text Alerts

Sign up for e-mail newsletters