Renovations to the Berrien County Health Department’s South County office in Niles are coming along nicely.
Berrien County Health Officer Guy Miller tells us they’re constructing a state of the art clinical space in an office that had become outdated. Department staff are temporarily operating out of a different part of the building.
“We moved across the hall where we are at South County, but it’s to renovate and create a state-of-the-art public health department that has a workspace as well as seven offices for clinical space,” Miller said. “So we can run our WIC, our family programs, sexual health, and our immunizations division out of there.”
Miller says contractor TRG has completed the plumbing, was expected to have the walls all finished last week, and is working on the electrical. Plans are coming together for the opening of the newly renovated space.
“We posted for a large furniture bid. We’re hoping to have our renovation in the South County building done, hopefully in July. So we’ll need to get some furniture and I hope to do an open house down there at some point.”
Phase One of the project was expected to cost about $1.2 million.
The county says once the work is done, the health department will move its offices in, and then the other half of the building will be available for overflow. Miller is looking forward to opening the new office in July.
