Our magnificent Chief of Police and Rotary Club member John Dyer updated our Club on Friday, December 11th on the new Police Department Headquarters as they begin the move from the old location. The old building was built in 2004 with 4,000 square feet of space and a City population of 6,000.
The process for a new building started in 2016 when John assumed command of the Lake Stevens Police Department. The original idea was to build a new headquarters on Chapel Hill. The Department started with a facilitated process to determine department needs. The process considered industry standards, employee and community input. This resulted in a building of 18,000 square feet that consolidated all operations in one location and would meet department needs for the foreseeable future.
The next step was going out to bid. At the time, the bid climate was not favorable with a booming industry. The low bid came in at $21 million dollars. The department attempted to value engineer the plan and they we able to reduce the cost of a new building to $18 million. The city plan was to finance the building with counsel issued bonds and the payments on the amount was not within a realistic range.
About the same time, the City and Police Department was approached by the Lake Stevens Fire District with an opportunity to purchase the Fire District headquarters complex. Three buildings including the main building, the conference center and the retail building that includes the Subway restaurant. One thing let to another and the complex was purchased for $4.5 million and tenant improvements would cost another $4 million dollars which was within the bond capacity of the city.
The Main Building consists of 8,000 square feet of space. The main floor (ground level, facing west) is more administrative in nature. The second floor is operations. The Chief's power point presentation showed photos of the various office spaces, employee lounge, small conference rooms, the sally port for processing and how the space is being utilized. The conference center will be turned into a training center and the Evidence facility is another benefit with 3,000 sq. ft. of space enough to hold 6 vehicles that would be processed for evidence. This is a new building.
The current building is about 14,000 sq. ft. Expansion would be a second floor on the conference center which would bring the complex to the 18,000 sq. ft. in the original architects rendering. The retail building will likely be sold and the second story to the conference center is in the future as the need arises.
Thanks, John for a beautiful presentation of the new Police Department headquarters. Congratulations!!!