Harrison Township and library team up on campus plan

HARRISON TOWNSHIP — Plans for overhauling the Harrison Township government offices have changed as township officials settle on a new direction for the existing municipal complex.

Officially put into motion at the Aug. 26 Harrison Township Board of Trustees meeting, the new plans call for combining Rosso Hall, which houses the library and the township’s primary meeting space, with the engineering building located just south of the hall.

“Imagine the engineering building and the library (and) connecting the two,” Harrison Township Supervisor Ken Verkest said. “In doing that, we’re sharing some common space.”

Thinking about space was common around the township last year. Both the township and the library staff were conducting their own reviews of their spaces, each contracting architects to do so.

“We have looked at several ideas with our architect including mobile units, construction using shipping containers, and building an addition onto the current structure,” Harrison Township Library Director Melissa Goins said via email. “Once we ran the numbers on the cost for each option, it was clear that we could get the most square footage with our dollars by building onto the current space. The current library is significantly small for the size of our community. We had to go with a plan that would get us the most square footage at the lowest possible cost.”

The township, meanwhile, was entertaining the idea of leaving its campus entirely. In the summer of 2022, the township contracted architectural firm Wakely and Associates to assess the condition of the campus and, among other things, evaluate the feasibility of moving the township’s government offices to a site at Tucker Park. Trustees hired Wakely and Associates to develop a campus redevelopment concept based on its report in November 2023.

When township officials found out about the library’s approach, talks began about backing the library’s plan. Going with one plan made sense cost wise, and township officials voted to hire the library’s architect for the project, Daniels and Zermack, on Aug. 26, 2024.

“It just makes sense that pooling our resources gets us both more,” Goins said via email. “The township and the library were working on individual construction projects and neither of us initially set out in this direction. But now that we’re here, it’s exciting to think about the possibilities.”

While the project is very much still in the preliminary stages, ideas for what will go into this connection are being considered. Verkest highlighted new meeting spaces as a key addition of this project, with township board meetings moving into the addition from its current location at Rosso Hall. Modern accommodations such as lactation rooms, which are present in newer government buildings, were another part of the project highlighted by Verkest. Goins noted the library would have dedicated programming space in the addition as well as a “community meeting space with kitchen amenities.”

Changes would not be limited to just the library and engineering building. Rosso Hall becoming the domain of the library gives the Harrison Township Public Library a large space to work with, though it will require some updating.

“All of the township buildings are aging and in need of repairs, including Rosso Hall and the current library,” Goins said via email. “There are big problems we’ll have to address. In order to use the entire space (both the upstairs and the basement of Rosso Hall) for the public library, we have to make those spaces ADA compliant and accessible. We know we’ll need an elevator to get there. In addition, modern libraries serve technological needs that older buildings aren’t equipped to handle. I would love for our community to have a makerspace for all ages to explore various technologies. No doubt upgrades to support modern technology are needed. We’re still early in the planning phase and while I’m not certain what it all looks like yet, these things are definitely on the radar.”

The township’s administration building, located in the southeastern corner of the campus, is planned to be demolished as part of this project.