Schuylkill County Coroner Dr. David Moylan now has new, more modern and spacious headquarters that had cost the county a fraction of what it cost other counties.

Moylan’s new Forensic Center is on the first floor of the Simon Kramer Institute, a division of the Lehigh Valley Health Network, in a former school building on Alliance Street in New Philadelphia.

Moylan had been occupying 1,800 square feet on the second floor of the building before creating the new space and moving last September.

“In 2012, the local hospital decided to get out of the autopsy business,” Moylan said. “I bought a refrigerated truck.”

That’s where the autopsies were done until the new facility was created.

Al Barnes, the first deputy coroner, said the effort to put the new digs together started last July when the county purchased a computer tomography machine.

“This unit will eliminate 80% of our toxicology, which cost the county $130,000 a year,” Barnes said.

A 12-foot by 13-foot refrigerated room was built in a garage next to the offices.

That room and the $87,000 CT scanner were the only costs the county incurred with the new facility.

Meanwhile, Barnes said that Lehigh County spent $19 million on its new coroner facility, while Montgomery County spent $9 million and Lycoming County spent $5 million.