The current Pine Plains Town Hall, located far outside the town center on Route 199 near Hammertown, has sparked years of concern about building disrepair and lack of easy access.
The Town Board, which has announced plans to construct a new Town Hall in central Pine Plains, will hold a public meeting July 10 to allow local residents to share ideas and suggestions about what they’d like to see in a new government building. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the Community Center located above the library at 7775 South Main St.
The new building is slated to be constructed on two adjacent town-owned lots, at 8 and 12 North Main St., next to the municipal parking lot. A current project description calls for a one-story building and full basement that will offer 300 more square feet than the current facilities.
“We’ve run out of space and simply need more room,” said Town Supervisor Brian Walsh of the Route 199 location, which has served as the Town Hall for the past three decades. The 5,700-square-foot building, which includes a basement and an aging trailer, serves as the headquarters for the Town Board and the Planning and Zoning boards as well as the police, town assessors, building inspector, a courtroom and two town justices.
Walsh called the back of the building an “eyesore” and noted that the trailer, which was added more than 20 years ago and intended as temporary housing for the assessors and building inspector, “is nearing the end of its useful life.”
In addition, the building’s location means it is primarily accessible by car, making it a difficult destination for voters and other residents with no means of transportation. (The Pine Plains Comprehensive Plan, the policy document that is meant to guide town government decisions, calls for upholding walkability by keeping key businesses centrally located.)
“I want something that looks welcoming” Walsh said.
Town Board member Sarah Jones said the time is right “to bring the Town Hall and its activity back to the center of the town.” Jones was on the board in April 2020 when the purchase of the North Main Street lots was unanimously approved. The residential properties on the land were demolished in the summer of 2021.
The Town Board has put out a tentative request for proposals (below) to begin the search for an architectural and engineering firm to work on all aspects of design and construction oversight. The draft document calls for a 6,000-square-foot wood-framed construction with an emphasis on energy efficiency. The construction budget is estimated at $3,750,000.
Plans for the future Town Hall will need to include basic infrastructure solutions for heating, sanitation and water supply. At a Town Board workshop meeting in May, Walsh said building style and payment options also had yet to be determined. He did not indicate whether the town would seek federal or state grants. Programs like NY Forward and the U.S. Rural Development Fund provide funding specifically for revitalizing rural downtown areas.
The July 10 meeting is an opportunity for the public to provide feedback on what they’d like to see in the new town building, but won’t be a question and answer session, Walsh said.
The search for a permanent Town Hall has bedeviled Pine Plains since the town’s beginnings. Dyan Wapnick, the president of Little Nine Partners Historical Society, says the earliest record of town business dates from elections held in 1774 at the area’s first tavern, located near what is now Ryan Road.
From there, town government functions moved between various locations including Stissing House, the Bowman Opera House (which now houses the Pine Plains pharmacy), and the former Odd Fellows Hall at the current site of the library, where the Town Hall was located from 1972 to the mid-1990s.
Wapnick said meetings at the Odd Fellows Hall could be “almost unbearable – unless you liked the smell of skunks, which lived underneath the building.”
Starting in the 1950s, a number of town supervisors had set aside funds with the aim of eventually contributing to the construction of a central Town Hall. In 1992, then-Supervisor Jerry Stuetzle – who had returned to office after a previous 22-year stint as the town head – instead took the controversial decision to purchase the Farm Credit building.
Scott Chase, the current chairman of the Zoning Board and himself a former town supervisor, said Stuetzle negotiated a five-year loan to complete the purchase, which under local guidelines was a sufficiently short term to avoid putting the issue to a public referendum.