Venango County Poised to Move Forward with First Stage of Renovation of Cornplanter Square Building

| August 2, 2017


FRANKLIN, Pa. (EYT) – Venango County is set to move forward with the first stage of the renovations on the Cornplanter Square building in Oil City it purchased in May.

“We’ve been looking for someone who renovates historic buildings and who is LEED certified,” Venango County commissioner Vincent Witherup said. “We put out requests for proposals, and we received five or six who decided to bid. We will probably award the contract at Tuesday’s (Aug. 8) commissioners meeting.”

That contract will be for a firm to come in and do an in depth analysis of the building and all its systems to decide what it would cost to get the building to where the county wants it to be, according to Venango County Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Jason Ruggiero.

“It’s for conceptual design and pre-development technical services,” Ruggiero said. “We need an in depth analysis of all the building systems including a general review of the building to include environmental (mold, lead, asbestos, etc), HVAC, the electrical system, the plumbing system and a code review. We also want them to let us know how feasible it would be for the building to become LEED certified. When they are done, we want them to give us two cost estimates, one for LED certified and one if it’s not LEED certified.”

According to Witherup, any renovation done to the building would include the entire building, not just the top three floors that the county hopes to use for its business incubator program.

“The majority of the work that needs to be done is infrastructure stuff that needs to happen,” Witherup said. “We are looking to renovate the entire building.”

Money for the renovation was not included in the 2017 budget according to Witherup but should be in the 2018 budget.

“The work won’t be done until next year, anyhow,” Witherup said. “I also don’t have a good handle on how much grant money is committed to the project.”

While there have been discussions of a brewpub using the bottom two floors of the building, nothing is concrete yet according to both Witherup and Ruggiero.

“We are past the talking stages, but we don’t have a firm contractual arrangement,” Witherup said. “We have an interested party who is extremely interested in using the building who we are working with. But we are probably looking at another year before anything can go into the building. It needs to be renovated first.”

While the Cornplanter Square building won’t be ready to house the business incubator program for at least another year, that hasn’t stopped the county from looking for businesses for the program, Witherup said.

“We are seriously looking at businesses right now for the program,” Witherup said. “We have other places (in the county) to put those start up businesses, specifically at FICDA (Franklin Industrial and Commercial Development Authority).”

Related story: Venango County purchases Cornplanter Square building


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