Groundbreaking of the Weatherly Borough Downtown Revitalization project took place Tuesday afternoon.

The site serves as a placeholder for the future municipal government complex building that will house the borough hall, police department and district court.

State Sen. John Yudichak, state Rep. Doyle Heffley, Carbon County Commissioner Tom Gerhard, Magisterial District Judge Joseph Homanko, Mayor Tom Connors, Sgt. Mike Bogart and members of borough council were in attendance for the ceremony.

“A $2 million project like this doesn’t happen in a small borough like Weatherly, but it did,” Yudichak said. “This is a great sight and there’s plenty of room for expansion to help the borough.”

The new complex building will make more room for the departments, particularly the police department, which currently consists of one room.

“When local legislators took a tour of the police department, there wasn’t much to look at,” Connors said. “Now, the complex project has started and there’s no turning back — it’s very exciting and we’re doing really well.”

The new borough building is 8,600 square feet. It is located on a 12.5-acre former industrial site which for 50 years served as a plant for car headlights and other electrical components.

The new police station is 2,680 square feet, about 10 times the size of its current headquarters. The borough and magistrate’s offices are each about 3,000 square feet.

There are also improved security features. In the current setup visitors walk directly into the borough offices. In the new building they will be greeted at a lobby window, improving security for staff.

The borough received a $1 million grant from the highly competitive Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program after coming up with another $1 million from other grant programs as matching funds. The other grants came from the Monroe Local Share Account, which uses gambling revenue from Mount Airy Casino, and federal grant money for the magistrate’s office.

The borough went through multiple rounds of bidding and ended up downsizing the project in order to complete it under budget.

The fate of the current building — a historic train station — is still being decided, because the police department may need to continue using it.

Aside from the building project, the borough received a $3 million grant from the Department of Environmental Protection to clean up waterways.

“In combination of the building and the grant from the DEP, this is the spark of economic development for the borough of Weatherly,” Yudichak said.

The complex site is located at 360 Veterans Lane, Weatherly.

Chris Reber contributed to this report.