Capital Region Water plans to relocate to this building in Uptown Harrisburg over the summer.
Capital Region Water is heading Uptown, with plans to consolidate its staff in a newly purchased office building on Front Street.
CEO Charlotte Katzenmoyer said on Tuesday that the municipal water/sewer authority has purchased a two-story building at 3003 N. Front St. in Harrisburg, the former home of Quandel Construction Group.
“CRW has been tossing around this option for awhile,” she said. “We did feel for a long time that a long-term lease was not a prudent financial option for us.”
According to Dauphin County property records, CRW last month paid $4.4 million for the 37,632-square-foot building, which includes about 70 parking spaces.
Katzenmoyer said that, with its current lease expiring, the CRW board felt that it didn’t make fiscal sense to continue leasing space in its downtown office building on the 200-block of Locust Street. CRW’s predecessor, the Harrisburg Authority, moved into that building in 2009.
“The most cost-effective option for us long-term was purchasing a building,” she said. “We started looking for buildings that fit our needs in terms of space and cost, as well as accessibility for our customers.”
In addition to 35 administrative personnel now located downtown, CRW will move its 15-person customer service staff to the new Front Street location. Customer service is currently located at CRW’s facility at 100 Pine Dr., on the border with Susquehanna Township.
CRW expects to make the move in “mid or late summer,” once the first-floor customer service center is built out, Katzenmoyer said. She added that the rest of the 11-year-old building is in “excellent shape,” needing only some fresh carpet and new paint.
In scouting a new location, parking was an important consideration, she said, as CRW now pays for its staff to park downtown. CRW also wanted its customer service center to be more accessible to transit, so that people could reach their office by bus.
“As we were looking for buildings, it seemed like this was a perfect fit for us,” she said.
For more information about Capital Region Water, visit www.capitalregionwater.com.
