AUBURN – City staff opened the doors to the freshly renovated Auburn Hall at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning with a table full of doughnuts and hot coffee.

“They’ve been all business, so far,” said Laurie Smith, community relations manager and acting finance director. Most of the customers headed right for the newly combined city clerk, tax and assessor offices, she said. They came in, took care of business and went on their way.

“We haven’t had many people come by just to look around,” City Manager Pat Finnigan said. She spent most of the day at the ground-floor entrance, greeting people as they came in.

There should be a greeter there for the rest of the week, she said. She will be available for informal tours for the next couple of days and might set up a scheduled tour of the building later in the week.

“We’ll have to see what people want,” she said.

Staffers officially moved out of their former home at the corner of School and Spring streets this weekend. Many worked parts of Saturday, Sunday and Monday to settle in and set up their new work space, Finnigan said.

It may take a few weeks to get used to the new, high-tech offices. Executive Secretary June Thompson said she was getting by without lights until city electricians could fix a glitch. Economic Development Director Roland Miller said crews had to trim a few inches off the front of his new desk to make room for guests to sit down.

“It’s just first-day stuff,” Miller said. “It will all get worked out.”

Roland Rancourt of Fairview Avenue urged both city staffers and Auburn residents to take some time to settle in. Rancourt was there to register an antique car, but he looked around a little, finishing his business.

“Don’t do anything for a couple of months,” Rancourt said. “If they start setting stuff up now, they’ll just have to do it again later. They need to spend a couple of weeks just getting used to it and find out how people are going to use it. Then they can start putting up signs and things like that.”

Many customers skipped the free two-hour parking in the Mechanics Row garage in favor of a lot next to the Black Watch Tavern. That’s fine for now, Finnigan said, but she hopes more people will use the garage.

“They don’t have to cross a street and they can park indoors,” she said. “It’s much better.”

Free parking is available on the first and third floors of the garage.

Several people Tuesday said they’d forgotten about the move and stopped by the old municipal offices first.

“I knew it was coming soon, I just didn’t realize today was the day,” said Judith Gaulin of Damy Drive. The new offices are beautiful, she said – an improvement over the old City Building.

“I’m just glad they finally got it done,” said Bill Matthews of Center Street. “The work really screwed up the traffic.”

Finnigan said crews should start interior work on the old Auburn City Building next week. They need to do asbestos cleanup before the building can be torn down to make way for an expanded Auburn Public Library.

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