Hooksett’s new town offices, in the historic Village School building, may bring back old memories for some town employees.

“It’s definitely weird,” said Hooksett Town Administrator David Jodoin, a former Village School student. “I hadn’t been back in this building since 1976.”

Last May, voters approved using $500,000 of collected revenue to refurbish the old school into new town offices, to replace the cramped offices inside the current Main Street municipal building.

Jodoin, who’s been spending some of his evenings working on the building, hopes the new offices will be up and running by July.

“I’d love to see us in here by then,” he said. “But it will all depend on how things flow together.”

Jodoin described the Village School renovation as a kind of “community spirit” project, and said a spending limit of $500,000 means a lot of volunteered materials and services will be needed.

“We’re trying to do as much as we can through volunteers and donations,” he said.

Thus far, for example, a zoning board member has chipped in to do some electrical work, some local companies have donated building materials, and crews from some town departments, like parks and highway, have aided construction.

Currently cramped municipal employees have offered to do some painting, Jodoin said. Many of the building’s dully colored rooms look a bit dusty and macabre, and haven’t seen much life since students last left the building in 2004.

Windows in portions of the building have been vandalized, and others strain to protect the many rooms from the outside world.

“These are probably the same windows from when I was in school here,” Jodoin said.

Other rooms, like a renovated lower level that will eventually become an employee wellness center – made up of used items trashed at the town’s recycling and transfer station – show decided progress.

An upstairs room now has a large concrete “town safe,” said Jodoin, built with fire resistant cinder blocks by local workers. The building’s main attribute, said Jodoin, is space.

“Right now we’re filing things all over the place,” said Jodoin. “This is going to make a much better work environment.”

The new building will also bring light to the several town employees who now work in rooms without windows in the municipal building’s upper level.

Jodoin said the new building will allow dramatically more office space, filing space and meeting space.

Currently the town’s technical review committee, which meets with developers to discuss building plans, is stuck meeting in a small room attached to the municipal building’s upstairs bathroom.

“You get interrupted every time someone needs to use the bathroom,” Jodoin said.

Much of the Main Street side of the Village School building was built in 1936, and things like hardwood floors and a wooden pullout stage – which has long been boarded up – offer some unique charms.

Jodoin said he hopes to bring some of the building’s historic elements back to life throughout the renovation.

“We’re trying to keep as much of that history intact as we can,” he said.

On the whole, said Jodoin, “It’s not a palace, but it’s usable.”