Allen County Commissioners purchased a building in downtown Lima where a new administration building will be constructed.
Precious Grundy | The Lima News
LIMA — Allen County is making progress on the construction of two new buildings. During Thursday morning’s agenda meeting, the Allen County Commissioners passed an amendment on the agreement with building designers WDC Group, LLC.
“We are continuing on the process to build a new structure for our Child Support Enforcement Agency,” Allen County Commissioner Cory Noonan said. “We have been working with the architect of the design group to get an outline or a sketch of the building. Today, we had to amend our agreement to allow for phase two to happen.”
The county hopes to not only construct a new Child Support Enforcement Agency but also a new administration building. The county purchased the building where the Hofeller, Hiatt and Clark men’s clothing store was previously located. Noonan said the county plans to tear down the building and rebuild a new structure to house the Allen County offices.
“We’re working with the design group,” Noonan said. “It is a larger building that will house than one agency. We had a draft a couple of weeks ago of what the building could look like and we will be seeing another draft of those plans today. This process will take a couple of renditions and discussions. Once they get that first draft kind of completed we are going to have the meeting set up with the offices. It is exciting because we are meeting the timeline of having a design and then to proceed forward after that takes place.”
The CSEA building will be constructed separately in an empty parcel owned by the county in downtown Lima. Noonan also said the project is estimated to cost around $15 million to complete the administration building and $7 to $10 million for the CSEA building. The final cost will be determined once the design plans are complete. The county is utilizing a portion of the funding from unrestricted ARPA dollars.
Reach Precious Grundy at 567-242-0351.
