Shane W Potter

BUFFALO TWP — The township’s municipal building, located on Bear Creek Road, may receive a long-awaited facelift soon.

At their meeting Wednesday night, Oct. 9, the township supervisors voted to advertise the bid for the renovation project.

According to township manager Rich Hill, the project has been discussed for roughly a year now, and will be paid for entirely using American Rescue Plan Act and other COVID-related assistance funding.

“We have architectural drawings that we’ve done, and we’ve worked everything out that we want with the building,” Hill said. “We’ve been talking about this for about a year, and we’ve had a couple of approvals by the board to retain an architect. They agreed to the floor plan that the architect has been working on.”

The architect retained for the project is Canzian/Johnston & Associates out of New Kensington, Pa.

Many of the planned changes will address the part of the building housing the Buffalo Township Police Department. These include adding bulletproof glass, as well as a separate entrance for the police, who currently have to enter through the same door as all other employees.

Another change will be expanding the meeting room toward the building’s parking lot.

Hill says that Buffalo Township has received $775,000 worth of American Rescue Plan Act funding from the federal government since the program’s inception in 2021 to assist local governments in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Hill, the township has not spent a penny of that funding, saving it all for this project.

“We’re going to use it strictly for this building,” Hill said. “Hopefully, the bids come in where we can afford the renovations based on what we have in COVID funds.”