ELIZABETHTOWN -- Moving from Elizabethtown to Mineville could alleviate a space crisis at the Essex County Board of Elections.

County Republican Election Commissioner Lewis Sanders said a tour of the former Moriah Community Building aimed at locating storage space turned into the realization that the entire Board of Elections could be housed there.

IMPRESSIVE' SITE

The building, located in Moriah's Mineville hamlet, was originally the Republic Steel office building when iron mines were operating in the town.

It was given to Essex County by Rhone-Poulenc, the successor to Republic Steel, and has been used by the Town of Moriah since 1992.

Now the major tenant, the Moriah Health Center, moved out of the three-story wooden structure, and Moriah is turning it back over to Essex County.

"We took a tour," Sanders said. "It's kind of impressive."

He said the first floor has about 4,000 square feet of usable space. The building also has a new heating system and has been rewired.

Supervisor Thomas Scozzafava (R-Moriah) said the building's deed says that if the town doesn't use it, ownership reverts back to the county.

He said no pressure was placed on the Board of Elections to consider the Community Center for its offices.

"Initially, it was to see if they could store voting machines there. As they took the tour, they said there was a possibility they could move their entire operation into that space."

Three tenants remain in the building: Literacy Volunteers, Girls Scouts/Brownies and X-Earth, the company that owns mineral rights to the old mines.

"We would like to see the building put to some use," Scozzafava said. "The building is in good shape structurally; aesthetically, it needs some work."

When the county had a space crunch in the 1990s, it tried and failed to move different departments into the Mineville space, he said.

"Some of the employees of Essex County didn't want to travel to Mineville," Scozzafava said. "We were letting the employees steer the ship."