Architect Shares More Information About Town Hall Renovation with Township Committee

MILLBURN, NJ – Architect Eli Goldstein of The Goldstein Partnership provided a second presentation to the township committee about proposed renovations to town hall. He had spoken about renovating versus rebuilding the town hall in May. Additional information is on the township website .

Goldstein explained, “In order to understand the existing building, one of the firms that's part of our team used a very sophisticated laser scanner and scanned the entire inside and outside the existing building to develop as built drawings, since there weren't any in the town's files.” He reported that an expert in historic buildings also studied the town hall.

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Goldstein stated that the building was built in three phases. “The phase at the bottom, which faces Millburn Avenue was built in the late 1800s. The two green wings were built in the early 1900s. The infill in the middle of the back was built in the mid 1900s.” He shared that his team wanted to take a holistic view of the building and try to solve the problems. Their design is meant to be “functional, adaptable and accessible.” Another goal is to incorporate the municipal court in town hall because it’s currently located across the street in the police station.

He talked about his firm completing a site survey and meeting with representatives of the State Department of Environmental Protection regarding floods. The water company checked the water pressure in the street and more.

They discovered that several areas in town hall do not comply with the American Disability Act (ADA) including restrooms, the elevator, the basement, several of the entrances, many of the doorways, almost all the door hardware, parts of the meeting room and parts of the dais where the committee sits and other things. There’s no insulation in the walls of the original building, the basement floods and the stairs are too steep for code. The HVAC systems need to be replaced and cannot provide comfortable indoor conditions. Goldstein said that's a partial list.

The plans reserve room for the engineering planning suite, the recreation department suite and the finance department suite. He shared a color-coded slide with all the rooms. The meeting room is larger than the current one.

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“[We] used a study model to show how the spaces are distributed, and essentially proposing to put a lobby in between the existing building in the upper drawer, existing buildings on the far left and the addition on the right,” Goldstein commented.

He also spoke of the Environmental Committee wanting to have a sustainable building, and Goldstein Architects built the first LEED silver certified public building in the state of New Jersey. Under the township ordinance in Millburn, they're required to make this project meet LEED silver.

The presentation begins at 35:00 in the meeting video .

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