By Joshua Burd
Middlesex County has hired DMR Architects to redesign a series of administration buildings in North Brunswick, the Hasbrouck Heights-based firm said Wednesday.
In a news release, DMR said it will redesign the county’s archive and record storage building and its highways and bridges complex administration building, both on Apple Orchard Road. The assignment also includes the county medical examiner’s office and morgue on Livingston Avenue.
With much of its tax and property deeds being kept and now issued online, one-third of the archive and record storage building’s nearly 8,000 square feet will be reconfigured into satellite office space for the county prosecutor and warehouse space for its large item storage, DMR said. Plans also include a new parking area, a new driveway off the main road and a loading area for the warehouse space.
The highways and bridges building plans call for gutting the interior to make office space for its current, reduced staff and that of the Middlesex County Area Transit. Plans also include a new roof, HVAC system and new windows.
The current medical examiner’s office will be enlarging its cold storage capabilities from less than 400 square feet to close to 1,000 square feet in total by expanding it into an underutilized adjacent garage, the news release said. The existing office space will be reconfigured to accommodate medical doctors’ offices, medical investigators and clinical technicians.
“Similar to what we are seeing in other municipal buildings as well as hospitals, facilities that were built in the 70s and 80s have outgrown their original uses,” Lloyd Rosenberg, CEO and president of DMR Architects, said in a prepared statement. “These are the types of changes that necessitate companies and organizations needing an architect.”
