It’s been many years in the making, but the third floor project is finally nearing completion. All it needs now is furniture.

The newly-completed space will house the mayor’s office, town council chambers, town administrator’s office, human resources and support staff for those offices. Once the space is officially open, town council meetings will no longer have to be held at the town’s senior center, next door to the town hall.

The project began approximately eight years ago, when current state Rep. Claire Janowski was a member of the Vernon Town Council.

“I was on the council when it started, and there wasn’t enough money to finish it,” she said. Town officials worked to obtain small grants, she said, but the project sat idle for some time.

When Dr. Ellen Marmer became mayor, she asked Janowski, who had become state representative, for help from the state legislature. Janowski approached Speaker of the House James Amann regarding funding.

“He [Amann] put it on his priority list to the governor and she [Rell] put it on the bond agenda,” Janowski said. “It’s been a bipartisan effort.”

The funding was approved by the General Assembly in 2005 and placed on the governor’s bond commission agenda later that year for disbursement . It came in the form of a grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism for $1.2 million.

“The original cost was $1.8 million [for the project],” said Town Administrator Christopher Clark. “We were able to negotiate with the contractor and reduce the [cost] of the project through mostly creativity for $1.4 million .”

As the project was underway, several problems became apparent, including one outer wall potentially failing. With the grant money, plus $233,000 in LOCIP (local capital improvement money from the state) funds and an second request for $175,000 for repairs to the east peak of the building, where the mortar was and brick had deteriorated, the project came in at $1.6 million, Clark said.

The grant called for the project to be mostly completed by June 30, and that requirement was met, Clark said.

The new council chambers has an occupancy limit of 115 people. The third floor space has been issued its certificate of occupancy, but is awaiting new office furniture.

“The one thing the grants would not cover is furniture,” said Clark.

Mayor Jason McCoy placed $75,000 in this year’s capital budget to cover the cost of furniture for both the council chambers and office areas. Administration is trying to get a purchase order issued for some of the furniture and working with vendors for the rest of the furniture, said Clark.

A grand opening is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 19, just before the town council meeting, from 5:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. Town officials are trying to get Gov. Jodi Rell to attend the festivities. State Rep. Claire Janowski, who worked with legislative officials to obtain the funding for the project, said she hopes that Clark, who will have finished his time as Vernon’s town administrator four days earlier, on Aug. 15, will come back to see the finished product.

“I look forward to seeing him there because he worked so hard,” said Janowski. “It was a long, long effort, but the end result is phenomenal.”

As for the space that the mayor’s office and town administrator’s office currently occupy, Clark believes that the finance office – the other half of the current configuration – may shift into the vacated space.