LOWVILLE — Lewis County officials must go back to the proverbial drawing board in their search for temporary office space after plans to lease a former parochial school building fell through.
"It doesn't look like that's going to happen, so we're looking elsewhere," Legislator Jerry H. King, R-West Leyden, chairman of the legislative Buildings and Grounds Committee, said at Tuesday regular meeting.
County officials on April 23 announced they had reached a tentative deal to lease the former St. Peter's Catholic School.
However, County Manager David H. Pendergast said after Tuesday evening's meeting that he was informed in the afternoon that the deal was off.
"There were some details that just couldn't be worked out," he said.
The need for zoning changes and variances for the school property, combined with other issues he declined to specify, had the cumulative effect of making church and diocese officials rescind their offer, Mr. Pendergast said.
The county manager — who last month negotiated with owners of a few area buildings concerning temporary office space — said he plans to renew the search this morning.
"We've got a couple of options," Mr. King said after the meeting, declining to identify them.
While initial plans were to renovate the 30,000-square-foot courthouse on North State Street in stages, county officials in March decided instead to vacate the building temporarily to allow quicker renovation work and more thorough asbestos abatement.
While court system offices will be moved into the new 31,000-square-foot courthouse being built behind the current one, temporary office space must be secured for the remaining departments.
County officials had hoped to begin moving offices into the former St. Peter's school in early June.
One classroom in the former school building has been used since October by Upstate Cerebral Palsy for an integrated child-care center. County elections officials last fall also began using the former Catholic school's gymnasium as the polling site for the six Lowville election districts.
The state's Agriculture Commissioner, Patrick M. Hooker, also attended Tuesday's legislators meeting to formally commend the county's Soil and Water Conservation District for receiving $777,429 from the state's Environmental Protection Fund. Award recipients were announced in late February.
"Any chance I get to be in Lewis County, I take it," Mr. Hooker said, noting that while he works in Albany, he lives in neighboring Herkimer County.
The funding — with $282,000 from six area farmers and $31,000 from the local district — will be used to install multiple best-management practices for environmental stewardship on those farms in hopes of improving area water quality.
While stewardship practices are important to farmers, it's not easy or cheap to implement them, Mr. Hooker said.
The state commissioner noted that, in the 1980s, he and Mr. Pendergast — then executive director of the state Soil and Water Conservation District — began working to rectify the matter. That effort ultimately led to creation of the state program from which these funds came, he said.
