Mercer County commissioners Ken Seamans, Cloyd E. "Gene" Brenneman and Olivia Lazor sat in their chairs in a first-floor hallway of the Mercer County Courthouse Thursday amid a steady din of hammers, power saws and electric sanders.

Seamans, Brenneman and Mrs. Lazor, along with a handful of other county employees and visitors, were simply trying, as best they could, to hold the first of their two April meetings.

And while it wasn't easy, in between all the noise and floating particles of dust, which seemed to cover every square inch of the building, they were as always able to conduct the county's business, even if it was behind a temporary barrier in a temporary location.

"The biggest problem is the dirt and noise," said Bill Boyle, the county's director of administrative services, who is also serving as coordinator of the courthouse renovation. "The major work is done after hours, but construction dust is always around. So we really have to compliment our people that they've put up with it."

Commissioners would probably prefer a new assembly room over compliments. Their hallway meetings have become standard operating procedure as the courthouse renovation project moves full steam ahead to a possible year-end completion.

A lot of the contractors are working two shifts to speed the project, but the thing that slows it the most, Boyle said, "is we are working in the building and the contractors are trying to work around us. Our goal at this point is to try to be done by the end of the year. I think personally that's a little bit optimistic, but it is our goal."

Another big goal, commissioners say, is to come as close as reasonably possible to the proposed $10 million budget. Whether that's realistic or not is another question. The renovation is being paid for with the same $34 million bond issue commissioners plan to use to build a new county jail.

As of Wednesday, the commissioners and county Controller Tom Amundsen had disbursed hundreds of checks to 41 vendors for nearly $7.4 million, leaving about $2.6 million remaining.

The current courthouse, the county's third, cost $324,000 when it was built in 1911. That would be barely enough today to cover the $307,000 cost of the scaffolding used during the exterior portion of the renovation, which cost $193,000; cleaning and restoring stained-glass windows in the courtrooms, which cost $18,230; repairs to the bell and clock at $49,980; and a "pigeon proofer" or bird barrier, $45,895.

When pressed last week on whether the project will come in on budget, Amundsen said flatly, "No." He does believe, however, the project could finish within a "couple of percentage points," or a couple-hundred thousand dollars, of the budget.

"Yeah," Amundsen continued, "it's going to be over the $10 million because there were a lot of unforeseeable things that have happened," including the addition of a courtroom for a fourth common pleas judge.

"You have to keep their feet to the fire," Mrs. Lazor said of the architect, Poland, Ohio-based 4M Co. "You have to tell them, 'Yes we know this is supposed to be historically correct. And where there are public areas we are staying historically correct. But if you're in a back area, a back office, we can make good, quality products that aren't historically correct."

4M partners Robert Mastriana and Paul Mastriana, she added, wanted the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 100 percent historically correct.

"What we're doing is making this building functional," Mrs. Lazor said. "We're modernizing the infrastructure and we're also going to maintain and preserve the historical appropriateness where necessary, but I want a common sense approach to this."

Exterior work was originally budgeted at about $1.2 million, according to a 2001 Herald story. However, preservation of the building, or waterproofing, came to $1.02 million all by itself.

"What had not been anticipated was all the major work on the exterior of the building," Mrs. Lazor noted. "But if you don't fix the outside, you're going to be in trouble on the inside. So all that work needed to be done. And in my estimation, we probably spent about $700,000 more than what I had anticipated doing on the outside of the building, but it needed to be done."

What also needed to be done was a complete overhaul of the building's infrastructure, including the heating, air conditioning, plumbing and electrical systems, which Amundsen said will account for close to $4 million of the total budget.

When the project kicked off in 2001, plans were in place for central air conditioning, along with upgrades to the hot water heating system and the wiring. The plumbing wasn't even mentioned.

"But once they started ripping out the walls and the ceilings, they realized the plumbing was so bad they had to fix it," Amundsen said.

"When we're done, we're going to literally have a new building, entirely new plumbing, entirely new electrical and entirely new heating and air conditioning," Boyle added.

It will be a new building, Mrs. Lazor added, the community can be extremely proud of.

"The contractors are working hard to try to do a good job," she said. "They all have people working for them who live in the county and they want to do the best job. They want to be able to walk away from this project and say, 'I did my best for Mercer County.' "

You can e-mail Herald Political Writer Jeff Greenburg at jgreenburg@sharonherald.com.

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