Attorney General Peter Kilmartin said Friday the new $15.4 million AG office, located at 4 Howard Avenue in the Pastore Complex in Cranston, near the ACI, will provide Rhode Islanders with greater legal accessibility than their prior office in Providence. The cost of the 26,700 sq. foot building was covered completely by a $500 million settlement with Google in 2011, for which the state’s Dept. of Justice received a $60 million allocation.

The new offices is very different from the previous office, where there was only street parking, it was in the middle of downtown Providence, and, according to Kilmartin, there was an extremely limited amount of space for the office to conduct their business with customers.

Those customers include people seeking background checks, fingerprint checks, and gun permits. It also includes any citizen being represented by the AG’s office in a legal case. The office will also have their diversion unit there, which, according to Kilmartin, helps individuals find alternative punishments for crimes due to the nature of the crime or a lack of criminal record.

“Most people don’t realize but the office of the Attorney General is the largest law firm in the state, with the largest clientele,” he said. “But we’re not just a law firm. And until these funds were earned, Rhode Islanders couldn’t afford the technology or infrastructure to serve our clients. We were just falling behind, and the taxpayers couldn’t afford to bring us back up.”

Kilmartin said that an average of 300 Rhode Islanders a day seek background checks and the service for them will be “much faster in the new facility,” and it will be the only place for in-person state and national background checks performed by the Attorney General’s office. Kilmartin added that with the economy “continuing to grow,” this service would be used more and more.

The building itself has space available for five background check windows, compared to one in the old office, and has enough offices, as well as conference rooms, so that people can have privacy during their meetings. Kilmartin said that in the other office there would be meetings with police officers, attorneys, and private citizens that would happen publicly in the front foyer due to a lack of space.

“The office woefully lacked the professional tools necessary to serve citizens,” he said.

Kilmartin also said the building’s new Cranston location is helpful to citizens because of it’s proximity to the registry and DMV.

“Now people can do what I call one stop government shopping,” he said.

The building has 122 total parking spaces and there is a RIPTA stop at the corner.

The funding of the project came solely through the Google settlement, a fact that Kilmartin touted as being the best aspect of the project.

“The biggest benefit of all is that not one single dime of taxpayer dollars was spent,” he said. “It was funded solely through Google settlement moneys. And all future upkeep and maintenance has been authorized by the Dept. of Justice to come out of those google settlement dollars as well.”

He added that the money from that settlement is “strictly limited” by the DOJ and can’t be used in the Rhode Island general fund, can’t be used for legislative appropriation, and can’t be used to supplant expenditures, salaries, or benefits.

U.S. Attorney Stephen Dambruch, a member of the task force that won the $500 million from Google, expounded on the suit, explaining that Google had an “improper” role in Internet pharmacy advertising, including the advertising of prescription drugs such as opioids.

Kilmartin said that the building, which is topped with 300 solar panels, will reduce utility costs by more than $16,000 annually, and that 75 percent of its construction waste was recycled or salvaged during the project.

“It’s not really the brick and mortar we are celebrating,” Kilmartin said, however. “It’s the intangibles, the services, and the foresight which we truly celebrate.”

The Customer Service Center at the facility opened on Monday, July 23, and will be open every Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.