The Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC) Board of Road Commissioners and top agency administrators today broke ground on what will be the agency’s first new administrative building since the 1950s. The building will also house a state-of-the-art traffic operations center (TOC).
The new building will allow the Road Commission to combine staff now housed in three locations into one building. RCOC office staff is now based in the agency’s Beverly Hills offices, its 1950s building in Waterford Twp. and in the current TOC, housed in rented space in the Oakland County Information Technology Building.
“This has been 50 years in the making,” explained RCOC Chair Andrea LaLonde. “The Road Commission has been planning to re-unite its administrative staff in one building since we were forced to expand into two buildings in the 1970s.”
She added the new building will improve the efficiency of the agency by improving communications, collaboration and cooperation among staff. “For 50 years, our office staff has been divided into two locations that are a half-hour drive apart,” LaLonde noted. “While we have made this work, it was never ideal and never intended to be permanent. At long last we are remedying was intended to be a temporary situation.”
RCOC Managing Director Dennis Kolar noted the agency is not borrowing any money to construct the new building, having been saving extra funds for more than 12 years for the effort. “We are not going in debt, and we are not spending money that had been intended for road projects or road maintenance,” Kolar said.
Rather, RCOC has tightened its belt and set aside money since 2012. This has included items such as income from the sale of surplus vehicles and equipment, the sale of excess land, leasing of space on traffic signal poles to cellular companies, higher than expected interest income, refunds from health insurance companies, an insurance settlement and more.
Additionally, RCOC received $5 million in federal grants to help pay for the new Traffic Operations Center (TOC), which will be included in the new building. RCOC will also save the rent it is currently paying for its TOC space. The agency will also sell its current building in Beverly Hills.
The new building is expected to cost $42 million and to be completed in 2026. “At that point, we will have a modern, environmentally friendly building that allows us to operate more efficiently, rather than two aging buildings plagued by leaking roofs, flooding basements and outmoded design,” Kolar said.
He added that the Road Commission first considered remodeling and expanding its existing Waterford Twp. building, but that process would have been more expensive than constructing the new building.
Participating in the groundbreaking ceremony, in addition to RCOC Board Chair LaLonde and Managing Director Dennis Kolar, were Board Vice Chair Eric McPherson, Board Member Nancy Quarles, RCOC Deputy Managing Director/County Highway Engineer Gary Piotrowicz, HRC Engineering Project Manager Jane Graham (HRC designed the new building and is overseeing construction) and Jason Rewold of Frank Rewold and Sons, which is doing the construction.
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Editor’s Note: A photo of the groundbreaking is attached. Pictured in the photo, left to right, are: RCOC Board Chair Andrea LaLonde, RCOC Vice Chair Eric McPherson, Frank Rewold and Sons Vice President Jason Rewold, RCOC Managing Director Dennis Kolar, RCOC Commissioner Nancy Quarles and RCOC Deputy Managing Director/County Highway Engineer Gary Piotrowicz.
