Westmoreland courthouse plaza to reopen Monday
Aug. 11—After months of construction delays, the main entrance and plaza in front of the Westmoreland County Courthouse will reopen Monday.
Workers have spent the last several days adding the finishing cosmetic touches and landscaping to finish a 16-month project to rebuild a two-story underground parking garage and refurbish the front courtyard of the government complex in Greensburg.
"I'm glad it's finally come to fruition so the taxpayers can use their plaza again," said Greg McCloskey, Westmoreland County's public works director.
Starting Monday, the courthouse's Main Street entrance will be shifted back to the being the front plaza, which for decades served as the point of entry and security checkpoint into the complex.
The front door into the century-old courthouse building that was used during the construction will be closed, Westmoreland County Park Police Chief Henry Fontana said.
"It's fabulous over there," Fontana said of the old entrance that sits at the foot of the grand stairway under the dome. "But, it's not as bright, and there's a lot of things going on over there including the courts. I'm glad to be back."
Two other courthouse entrances, both on Pennsylvania Avenue, will remain open.
Meanwhile, the redesigned plaza will again allow for outdoor recreation and a gateway into the courthouse.
It features a separate area for permitted events at the corner of Otterman and Main streets and aluminum lettering that spells out "Westmoreland." Newly installed lighting will enable the county to color coordinate the decorative lettering with the colors used to illuminate the courthouse dome.
McCloskey said courthouse visitors will notice that the plaza was built on a slight grade to allow water to drain away from the courthouse. As a result, it sits several feet above street level as it moves south along Main Street.
The new grading is a result of a raised concrete deck that sits above the garage that could enable future expansion of the courthouse complex.
"The garage was built for additional floors, and to prepare for that potential we had to raise up the ceiling and the deck. If they ever do decide to expand up, this makes that possible," McCloskey said.
Work crews installed the final touches in preparation for next week's reopening. Seating areas with metal and concrete benches, planters and trees were installed.
Sidewalks bordering the courthouse along Otterman and Main streets were expected to open Thursday.
Monday's opening is the culmination of a project that officials initially expected to be completed in about six months.
The county commissioners closed the two-level garage in March 2022 after engineers reported the structure was in danger of a potential collapse. Architects designed a rebuild that replaced the garage and reconfigured the courthouse plaza atop the parking structure as part of a $7 million project paid for from the county's covid relief funds.
"Until we tore (the garage) out, we didn't know what he had," McCloskey said. "There were material shortages and architects had to fine tune the drawings."
Despite the delays and design changes, the costs remained at $7 million for installation of the new garage, which reopened in early July, and the plaza. McCloskey said an additional $329,000 has been spent to pay architects and to cover the parking costs of about 140 courthouse employees who used the county garage.
Rich Cholodofsky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Rich by email at rcholodofsky@triblive.com or via Twitter .
