A big red balloon bearing the word "CONGRATS" stands above a fresh-flower delivery inside the sparkling new building.

A few feet away is the spacious, state-of-the-art municipal meeting room that Millersville Borough Council will use for its first official monthly meeting on Tuesday, July 24.

And just down the hall are the meeting rooms and offices that borough Manager Ed Arnold and others on his staff did NOT have when they worked a block away at Millersville's old borough hall.

"There's just no comparison between what we have now versus what we had before," Arnold enthused on Thursday, less than two weeks after the borough moved down the block and into its new home.

There is certainly a bounce in the step of borough employees these days.

Outside the new building, at 100 Municipal Drive, the surrounding neighborhood in the heart of the college town is all new as well, with a series of new homes either built or under construction.

For Arnold and his five-member staff, not to mention the borough's dozen-strong police department, the new office is a welcome end to a search that began several years ago.

Arnold called the new $3.29 million municipal headquarters "the borough's icon ... a community building that symbolizes the borough and its character, (and) the unique community culture of our college town."

For the 7,774 residents of Millersville, the new 12,200-square-foot building is indeed a showpiece.

The meeting room, on your left as you enter, has seats for 60 people, twice the seating capacity as before.

It also has a state-of-the-art communication system for anyone who wants to make a presentation. You also can enter the meeting room through a spacious, well-lit lobby.

There's more room for the employees as well.

And, Arnold said, more room for the "the stuff that you accumulate over 30-some years," which was how long the old borough hall at 10 Colonial Ave. was used.

It borough employees 11 months from ground-breaking to moving day (the ribbon-cutting was June 30), and "now that we are in, we have the little odds and ends that you tie up after you move in, whether it's a home or, in our case, our business home," Arnold said.

"You know, getting everything in order."

The old building is just about emptied out, and the borough plans to put it up for sale soon. While it was cramped as a municipal office, it could be a "nice commercial location with an off-street parking lot," Arnold said.

At the old borough building, a former dentist's office, the police were especially cramped for space, and the building could not comply with regulations, such as those mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

The new offices house both the borough government and the Millersville Police Department on one floor.

Borough officials also had recently buried a time capsule beneath the cornerstone at the new borough offices. It is to be opened on the 100th anniversary of the new building's dedication, June 30, 2107.

Borough officials had been talking about a new borough building since at least the late 1990s, when the borough began putting money aside to pay for construction costs.

Millersville's first local government office was a building that doubled as a water-pumping station, before the borough moved "temporarily" in 1970 into the old borough building.

That temporary move lasted 37 years.

CONTACT US: doconnor@LNPnews.com or 481-6033