CAMDEN — The Village of Camden held its grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony for the renovated Town Hall on Thursday, May 11. Camden Town Hall is the new home of the village offices, police department, and village archives.
Once phase two of the renovations is complete, the top floor of the town hall will be able to be rented out for receptions.
Prior to the ribbon cutting ceremony, attendees were able tour the building, before Mayor Lisa Moss and council member Kelly Doran spoke about the completed project.
“The council and myself would like to thank everybody for coming,” Moss said. “We have a small list here of people we would like to thank for everything that they have done.”
Doran continued, “First I would like to thank Jack White. If not for Jack White, this building would be a parking lot. Jack and his group and everybody in that group, they know who they are there’s too many to list. There’s dozens, and a few of them are here tonight. Then — all of the helpers who helped Jack in the initial phases.
“All the donors past, present, and future, because I hope there’s some in here — I’m confident that maybe there will be. All of the council that really came through — without council this never would have happened. I’m very grateful to them. All of the support of the residents and Gene Krebs also played an important part here. Also, our State Representative Mr. Jeff Rezabek is here — one of our future and present donors. We’re going to hit him for money.
“Gene [Krebs] was instrumental in getting us a State Planning Grant back in the 1990s. Obviously, you can see what we used that for, we used it for planning. Then Greg Snyder, he’s our architect. There’s a story there. Our architect died and when he died that set us back, but Greg [Snyder] worked in that office and was able to salvage and bring our plans back with him.
“Then the ladies in the archive, they’ve done great things around the building making it nice and homey. Bruce Perry is our general contractor and Kevin Fogt is the man that has seen that every nail has been driven. These men have done practically everything. I talk about Jack having saved the building, and he did — but these guys made it happen.”
Doran added, Perry was offered $80,000 for the general contractor’s job, but he took none of the money and did the job for free.
“I think we owe him just about everything,” Perry said. “He was the first man on the job and the last to leave.”
Following Doran’s speech, council moved everyone out to the front of the building for the ribbon cutting ceremony.
While the building is now open for business, there is still another phase of renovation yet to be done. It is unclear when phase two will be complete, but according to Doran, phase two will retroactively pay for the building when people start renting the room.
