Thinking of getting a jump on paying your taxes, visiting the City Hall Annex to get a building permit or checking assessment records?

Well, you’d best check where to go first. Yesterday was the first day of the big move of municipal offices from the former Buttonwoods Community Center and former Randall Holden School to new digs in the saw tooth building in Apponaug originally built as one of the buildings that made up the Apponaug Mills.

The building bought in auction from the state by AAA Northeast was to have been a service center as well as a call center for the company. However, the pandemic brought a change in plans and AAA agreed to lease the greater part of the building for 15 years, with options to renew, as the new home for the City Hall Annex. Under the agreement, the space was built out to city specifications and fully furnished.

Bins, boxes and dollies to roll them started appearing in the current offices over the past couple of weeks. The contents of cabinet files by the dozens were packed up with some offices, such as tax collectors, looking like a cardboard fortification by Friday.

Department relocations are being staged so that operations continue in Buttonwoods while half the office makes the move to the saw tooth. The tax collectors office is slated to move on Sept. 8. Community Development and Personnel now located at Randall Holden will be the first to move this Friday. The Planning Department will be the last department to make the move on Sept. 14.

At the other end of the move, crews worked last week on the bridge connecting the second floor of the saw tooth building to the higher ground level of Greenwich Avenue and a walking route to City Hall. Below the bridge another crew paved a parking lot while inside painters did touch up and prepared a finish coat to the stairwell leading from the atrium to the second floor.

Mayor Frank Picozzi said Tuesday that parking may be problematic as lots won’t be fully completed in time. To provide adequate public parking, Picozzi is asking municipal employees to park at the City Hall lot.

Inside the saw tooth, hallways carry the names of departments. Natural light from the jagged rooftop slanted windows fills the building. Colors are muted grays, blues and greens that contrast with the natural brick of the exterior walls.

The relocation of annex offices, formerly behind City Hall in a building that started off as a police and fire station and after several additions transitioned into offices for a host of departments, was necessitated when over a frigid weekend hot water pipes burst in the second story community development office in 2018. By the time the break was discovered, the assessors office on the first floor was flooded and steam had permeated the building.

In a matter of days, offices were hastily relocated to vacant rooms in the former Greene School on Draper Avenue. Later during the administration of the late Mayor Joseph Solomon, they were moved to improved accommodations in the Buttonwoods Center that former Mayor Scott Avedisian closed because of the cost of renovations and lack of use. The building, which was advertised, is being sold for $600,000 to Shore Line Property Inc., the high bidder.