Police and Public Works Complex-- Chapter 2

Many of you have read some of the recent newspaper articles about the Police and Public Works complex. I think its time to give a chronology of what actually went on. I have broken down my posts into 5 chapters. Chapter 1 is how we acquired the land. Chapter 2 will be on how we decided on the building design. Chapter 3 will cover how we bid the building out. Chapter 4 will cover the planning and construction of the project. Chapter 5 will discuss some of the recent events. When there are points of contention in the process, and there are, I will link to the relevant minutes of the board meetings so you can verify for yourself what went on.

Chapter 2
Once the decision was made to move forward with a new facility. There was a debate about doing two buildings. There were numerous concepts discussed, with the then Police Chief Foy lobbying for a separate building since the police did not want to share facilities with the Public Works department. Around that time District 116 was enforcing its policy of no after school meetings for community groups in it's facilities. The concept finally emerged that the two departments share a building with a meeting facility between the buildings to allow community groups to meet in the community (a novel concept). This also made sense to share mechanicals and reduce other expense duplications. Suprisingly this was not adopted for some time by the board (my opinion).

At the same time we narrowed down 18 architect proposals to 4 who then made formal presentations to the board of trustees in executive session. The clear winner of the "interview" process was Sente Rubel Bosman and Lee a large local firm with extensive municipal experience. The artist's rendering above was the concept that the board gave its tentative blessing to.

The thinking for the design of the building then quickly took shape with Police on the east side, Public Works on the west side, and a meeting room in between. In addition the building was also designed with space and thought for future expansion if needed.

Highlights of the Public Works side of the building are:

• Enough space to park all our vehicles indoors.
• Two reapir and cleaning bays with one lift.
• A separate salt storage facility
• Plenty of office and planning space for our managers and employees

The highlights of the Police station are:

• Four cells for prisoners with a booking area.
• Locker rooms for the officers.
• Plenty of office space for staff.
• Large evidence processing area.

The public spaces contain a state of the art meeting room with a built in projector and sound system. The furniture is configurable into many different shapes and sizes, plus you can link your laptop into ports on the desks.

Overall the design of the building is quite close to what we visualized over three years ago. Once we are occupying the building in a few weeks I am sure it will serve our needs for many years to come efficiently and effectively.