Highlands NJ New Borough Hall
Cleanliness and order. That’s the first two things you notice on a tour of the Highlands borough Hall under construction at the intersection of Route 36, which is Navesink Avenue, and Miller St, across from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church.
Kappa Construction Corporation, a family-owned business for decades, is the general contractor for the building and broke ground April 3 of last year. Working with teams of subcontractors who have worked with the company many times in their history of building everything from municipal buildings to multi-family dwellings, the father and son team who head up the company take justifiable pride in their work and the standards they have set.
Corporation president Gus Kamaratos, his son, project manager Phil Kamaratos for the borough hall construction, along with the borough’s project manager, Caitlyn Munson, took time this week to permit an hour-long visit by VeniVidiScripto to the site, answer questions, and explain procedures and policies.
Work on the Borough Hall is proceeding ahead of schedule, and barring any unforeseen weather situations it appears the new building will be completed ahead of its scheduled October date.
Once open, the Highlands Police Department as well as every borough employee will appreciate the broad expanse of space the building provides to meet their everyday needs of running a municipality.
After years of operating out of a small store front type building on Bay Avenue in the 1950s, followed by a larger building on the same site after Hurricane Donna in 1960, a facility that housed a library but limited space for the police department, borough employees have been working in cramped quarters for more than a decade after Hurricane Sandy destroyed the building.
Since then, the borough clerk and borough administrator’s offices have been contained in cramped trailers and makeshift buildings, with the police department in another equally cramped facility a short distance away along Shore Drive.
The borough will now provide the largest and best equipped municipal office building the borough has ever known.
Designed by architect Settembrino Architects of Atlantic Highlands, the borough hall has undergone several change orders since first designed and now has two entrances, neither of which is on the Navesink Avenue side of the building.
With the police department on the lowest level of the two-story borough hall complex with a peaked roof and solar paneling on the highest peaks, the entrance to that section of the building faces Valley Avenue and opens to a large hallway and police department offices as well as a staircase and elevator nearby with access to the municipal business portions of the building.
Another door at that level on Miller Street opens to another section of the police department and will most likely only be accessible by department members. The facility includes a number of rooms for detectives, drug testing, offices, police lounge and bathrooms, showers and uniform storage, as well as two jail cells, ADA complaint, interrogation rooms, and a chief’s office.
Other offices near the entrance will enable personnel to be present to direct visitors who use this entrance to access municipal offices to the stairs or elevator, or other police department personnel.
The door for conducting municipal business faces the rear yard of the Daino household on Miller St. and is accessible from both the Miller Street and Route 36 parking areas. The entry leads to a hallway designed to enable easy access to either the building departments or the series of windows for other municipal business.
That floor of the facility includes a large room with windows opening out to the hallway for conducting business, several rooms for council sessions, a large meeting room for public meetings, a lounge area for employees, bathrooms, the court facilities, and tax, storage and records rooms.
In compliance with state judicial regulations, there is a court room, the judge’s private chamber and bathroom, and an office for the court clerk, all on this same level.
Both adjacent neighbors and the construction company recognize a new government building in what has been a residential neighborhood and parking lot for the church is not easily welcomed by homeowners, but there appears to be a healthy and understanding relationship between the two. Neighbors are politely enduring the traffic patterns and parking situations during construction, and the construction project manager is generous with information and suggestions.
Parking in front of the police headquarters on the side of the building as well more limited parking along the borough office side provides for approximately 50 cars. Access and egress to the parking will most likely be permitted both from the current curb opening on Route 36 as well as Miller St. As current traffic regulations stand, access to the downtown area leaving Borough Hall means driving east on Route 36 to Capt. Joseph Azzolina Bridge, since no left turns are allowed from the highway on to Miller Street.
Company president Kamaratos takes obvious pride in his work and the standards he has set and expects, and it appears every subcontractor meets or exceeds those standards. Hours into a typical workday, there are no wires, equipment, or paraphernalia of any kind on any of the hallways, extra products are neatly stored in one of the finished rooms, carpeting already installed is covered and lighting makes it easy to see.
While it is the architect who determines the specific materials used from paint and its colors to carpeting and floor coverings, Kamaratos made it clear that his company does not cut corners and chooses the best in the high-quality options set by the architect. As an example, the three or four different color paints, with a predominance of a clean gray color, are all Sherwin Williams paints and designed specifically for the specific type of surface it is covering. “There is no savings in using a cheaper or inferior product,” Kamaratos said. Similarly, the wooded doors are stained at the manufacturing plant.
While the main parking area is paved, Munson, the borough’s oversee of the project, explained it is only the subsurface and is in place before completion of the project for specific reasons. It is the one-time contractors hope for rain, she explained, since it would show if there were puddling or problems anyplace. Any less than perfect situation could be corrected before the final topcoat is poured. “That’s the last thing that gets done,” she said.
Munson, who earned her degree in engineering from Rutgers University, has worked on a variety of sites in her career, one of the most recent an affordable housing complex in Portchester, New York
Obviously well versed in every aspect of the borough hall construction, she is quick to point out the need for work schedules to be coordinated and scheduled to avoid any conflicts or wasted time. Scheduling is part of the duties of Phil Kamaratos, the construction company’s project manager for the building. He has been fastidious in ensuring there are no conflicts that slow down or prevent another sub-contractor’s work. As proud of the company as his father, the younger builder laughed that his father might be the owner of the company but does take orders from him as the project manager on this job.
There have been several change orders to the new Borough Hall, Munson explained, some occasioned by borough staff or administrators seeking a larger or smaller room than planned, so adjustments have to be made to ensure the changes do not contradict all building standards. The borough is subject to every inspection approval any commercial building is required to meet.
To avoid any possibility of conflict, Highlands pays the Holmdel building inspector rather than its own building inspector, which is the Middletown inspector, to do the inspections on the new building.
There have been virtually no delays in construction, the senior Kamaratos said, saying the contractors were able to complete their work both because of efficiency and good planning as well as extremely good weather during the winter months.
Nor have there been any major problems throughout the construction. Munson had to think a while before agreeing that currently the only problem is the elevator. “Everything is ready for the equipment to be installed,” she explained, “but when the apparatus arrived, it was missing a piece.” So, they have to wait for installation until the missing piece arrives from the manufacturer.
Both borough administrator Michael Muscillo and Mayor Carolyn Broullon are on site frequently, both to watch progress and familiarize themselves with the construction. Asked for a comment on the proximity of construction completion and a formal opening of the Borough Hall, the Mayor said “we have been waiting for this day for quite some time and are excited to finally see the opening of our Municipal Complex.”
The contractor was diligent in yet another visual impact of the Route 36 site. Flagpoles ordered for the Navesink Avenue side of the building arrived about four weeks ago, Kamaratos said, surveying the work currently underway by the landscapers. “We wanted to put the American flag up as soon as we got it,” he said, “and the landscapers are doing a great job with their plants and flowers in working around them.”
