WILLIAMSBURG — The snooze button has been repeatedly pressed on repairs to the town’s offices over the years — but the building is finally waking up.

Earlier this month during a discussion about upcoming improvements, Select Board members collectively described the town office building at 141 Main St. as “tired.” It takes no expert to assess that, as the white exterior paint of the building is chipped, rotten and has black spots. The immense windows of the space, many 8 feet tall, won’t open, which makes for a muggy summer office environment, and the structure makes little to no impression along the town’s main road.

But imagine a sleek coat of white exterior paint, a new roof and replacement windows with new blinds. Picture a new canopy, one that is not on the verge of collapsing, over the front entryway. Now add native grasses and shrubbery out front, and new gutters that aren’t rusted and actually work.

These are among the upgrades coming to the town offices, where the first phase of updates is nearing completion of a three-pronged project that will be ongoing for the next couple years after kicking off in December. The Select Board is currently discussing the project’s second phase as estimates roll in, but no work will be done on this phase until an amount is approved by a Town Meeting vote this spring.

Town Administrator Nick Caccamo describes the overall renovation as “a curb appeal focused project.”

“This space gets a lot of action,” he said Wednesday as he walked through the building, where in addition to being the center of town where marriage and death certificates are doled and meetings are held, it also houses the town’s Council on Aging.

Assessing what has been done in the first phase on the interior, Caccamo showed how an ongoing renovation of a former mail room is being turned into an additional bathroom, as a new floor was just put down and fixtures are about to be installed.

Outside, he pointed out how the currently wilting canopy will make way for one that is more in line with the original design of the 1859 structure, which had originally served as the town’s school. In addition, the building’s front-facing windows, which overlook Route 9, will be soon replaced.

This phase, which is being done by General Contracting Solutions out of Southwick, comes at a cost of $230,000. That price tag has involved some smaller projects as well, including electrical work as well as a $1,400 charge to patch and repair holes caused when the office’s kitten, Aska, had to be fished out of the walls and rescued after getting lost recently.

This phase, which should wrap up this summer, is funded by $48,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding, $51,000 from the fiscal year 2022 budget, and $150,000 from the fiscal year 2025 budget.

The next phase will begin shortly thereafter, pending Town Meeting vote of approval. The second phase will include more window replacement, exterior paint to the tune of $120,000, and new gutters for about $10,000, a flower bed and array of native plants estimated to cost $3,000 and new blinds, for which prices are still rolling in. as well as blinds and a flower bed at the front of the building.

“If you walk around the building, there’s at least three locations that have rough spots that don’t drain down and they just sort of shoot out,” Caccamo said about the current gutters. And about the plantings, he explained that, “We tried to select plants that could take on a lot of direct sunlight ... and also provide minimum upkeep.”

Then in about three years the asphalt shingle roof is projected to removed and replaced with a new roof.

The Select Board has been considering the renovations for some time, but put off a decision when it looked like the town offices were going to be housed inside the new Public Safety Complex. When that didn’t happen, Caccamo said “we sort of identified this as the home of town offices.”

“We’re taking this opportunity to get caught up on deferred maintenance,” he said.

This is also far from the building’s first makeover. The building had originally been constructed in the Italianate style, which had been popular in America during the second half of the 19th century. As seen from the interior, the casing of the windows retains some ornamentation, but the bulk of its neo-classical detailing was pulled back as early as the 1930s — a renovation which also reduced the L-shaped configuration of the building by slicing off the facade and second front stairway, which is now a plot of grass out front.

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com