Alna’s next town office arrived Friday, at 9:18 and 9:19 a.m. About half a dozen residents watched and some photographed as one half, then the other came south on Route 218 and then backed down the new driveway.

The modular town office stayed in two afterward, awaiting seating on the foundation.

Resident and volunteer Ralph Hilton later said plans called for a crane to swing the halves onto the foundation Tuesday, Dec. 18. Then the roof will go on and work can start on turning the shell into a town office, Hilton said.

"It's pretty exciting, I think," First Selectman Melissa Spinney, glass jar of coffee in hand, said as she watched the building-to-be's arrival.

She said it will mean more than a place for town business. The town plans a trail and she envisions a playground, also.

"This will be a place where people can congregate. It will be a center for the town," she said of the site the town has owned for years, part of the acreage it got with the cape that has been the town office.

Resident David Seigars watched from the fire station parking lot with grandson Casey Ganun. Seigars said he was pretty happy. "It's finally here," he said, smiling.

Alna's Tom McKenzie has never seen a modular come together. "So it should be interesting," he said.

March town meeting voters favored modular over renovating and adding onto the cape or renovation alone. Residents nodded a $260,000 loan and selling the cape, and in August passed what selectmen called a technical article on the loan, for the same sum.