Government Plaza is a building complex in Binghamton, New York containing the offices for the City of Binghamton, Broome County and

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * ...

State. The complex is located in Downtown Binghamton on the block bounded by State, Hawley, Isbell and Susquehanna streets. It was constructed as part of a massive urban renewal plan in Binghamton through the late 1960s and early 1970s. Government Plaza is composed of three buildings which come together to form a U-shaped complex: * the towering 18-story State Office Building, which is the tallest building in the

Southern Tier The Southern Tier is a geographic subregion of the broader Upstate New York region of New York State, consisting of counties west of the Catskill Mountains in Delaware County and geographically situated along or very near the northern borde ...

region of New York * the Edwin L. Crawford County Office Building, which forms the east-wing of the complex * Binghamton City Hall, which forms the west-wing. The complex includes an underground two-level parking structure. An elevated plaza that originally led to the second-story lobby of the State Office Building was torn down in the mid-1990s due to deterioration and increasing maintenance costs.

State Office Building contamination

The State Office Building is infamous for a fire that took place on February 5, 1981. A transformer explosion in the basement of the building spewed soot containing toxic

PCBs Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds, formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States by the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, Toxic Substances Contro ...

throughout the entire building. While initially expected to only take days to reopen, the cleanup effort revealed the difficulty of removing PCB residue. The building remained closed until October 11, 1994. Multiple environmental samples taken throughout the cleanup had illustrated that despite their best efforts, workers had been unable to remove the residue, leading to several complete decontamination procedures within the building. The duration of the cleanup, combined with the uncertainty of the final effectiveness of the cleanup, led many workers to question whether the building was safe enough for reoccupation. While the initial cost of constructing the building in 1972 was $17 million, the cleanup efforts cost $53 million.

References

{{Coord, 42, 5, 48, N, 75, 54, 41, W, display=title Buildings and structures in Binghamton, New York Government buildings completed in 1972 Skyscraper office buildings in New York (state)