My son and his Cub Scout troop took a tour of the new Police Station in Central Greenwich yesterday. What was the takeaway? It was that the police station was far nicer than our house.
Mind you, our house could use a few touchups here or there, but its a solid 160 year old place that we try to take the best of care with. Nonetheless, this house, or many of the solid unsold McMansions could barely compete with the splendor that we taxpayers have invested in a happy police force.
Some of the elan associated with the place include marble countertops, a dormitory that I would certainly like to live in, 17 cells, very well accomplished wood finishes including trimwork that I could easily say is the best of the best. For a Town of 60,000, we spent nearly $30 million on this building – and we already owned the land. Norwalk, by comparison, with 100,000 people and a heck of a larger crime problem, spent $10 million less and got just as much, in my estimation. But one observation that was made by everyone from the ages of 8-58 was just how empty it feels. The police station is just too big.
Now, I know most think this an old story. Its built, its done, don’t you respect the police department, didn;t I go over this in the 2007 election, I get the drift and yes, it is built and apart from subleasing the place, it will be there for my grandchildren no doubt.
The reason it is a story again is because of the drive to build a neighboring companion Fire Station. I clearly remember the to-do back in 2003 and 2004 when this thing got off the ground, this drive to build a “public safety complex”. The largest complaint came from people who accused then-First Selectman Jim Lash of having an “Edifice Complex”. This complex, which allegedly infects re-elected Chief Executives in communities worldwide, is the itchy disease to build something to prove to the future that You Were There. Fixing up buildings does not accomplish this – Mr. Lash had absolutely no interest in refurbishing the old station. It was New, or nothing.
The question I ask though,what is the pressing need? Police or firemen do not need to be in buildings to stop or deter crime, put out fires or get cats out of trees. Children need to be inside school buildings that are properly built or have proper facilities for things like music – that makes better citizens. Its not sexy, they never name these additions after people like Mr. Lash, but they do give more bang for the tighter and tighter buck, and personaly impact thousands of families.
You know, now that I think of it, there is plenty of room for the firemen to sublet over at the new building. The Jets did it for years in Giants Stadium, and eventually they built a new building together. Why not in Greenwich
As far as the partisan comment, guilty as charged. But that never should get in the way of what is right, even if it doesn’t slant in my direction.
As for your comments about building. What I don;t understand is the acceptance of high costs. Certainly, in a Town where one can find $20 million dollar personal homes, we can get a bit desensitized to the dollars. Additionally, if there can be a splashy addition to the High School, or the Fire Station, or Witherall, or any other edifice – without a tax increase – many citizens just focus on the results and not the means to get there. Literally every project we have undertaken over the past few decades has been overbudget, and corners still cut (see Ham Av). The whole perceived problem with the High School auditorium started with a cutback in the 1969 construction.
If we were demonstrably unsafe, certainly we should consider a fire station. But absent that proof, and I’ve seen no person make that argument, we need to marshall our dwindling resources for capital projects in the unsexy realm of drainage, flooding, schools, roads etc, IMHO.
As far as Jim Lash, I always admired his ability to achieve things by force of will and conviction. But he was attacked in quite a bipartisan fashion at the time for the projects, and not just by me.
Comment by Frank Farricker — February 8th, 2010 @ 12:06 pm
You made a really good point about the Norwalk station vs. ours. I’ve often noticed that schools and other buildings in other towns are done for a lot less than they are here. I think that any proposal for a school, auditorium, fire station, or other municipal building should include a comparison of the proposed Greenwich cost vs. similar buildings in other towns. And differences (meaning higher Greenwich costs) should be justified before anything gets approved.
Comment by John Bowman — February 23rd, 2010 @ 1:49 pm
Mr. Farricker:
I am certainly glad you appreciate the new building. It is, after all, the community’s not the police department’s. As the police department’s liaison to the building project, I’ve spent the better part of the last four years endeavoring to ensure the building was worth the Town’s investment.
I am sorry you were left with certain misconceptions. For the record, please allow me to put forth the following:
1) All six countertops integral to the building are plastic laminate over wood (like traditional Formica.) All other countertops, work surfaces and desktops (even the Chief’s) are of similar construction (plastic laminate over wood.) All of the furniture in the building is the mid-grade modular Steelcase office furniture that has been established as the Town’s municipal standard. This is the same grade, type and manufacture of office furniture found in other municipal buildings like Town Hall.
There is not a single piece of marble anything in the new facility – to include countertops. The only thing close are the walls in the public lobby and some areas of the exterior facade that are polished granite to a height of about four feet. This material was selected to render the building’s appearance consistent with the existing 1938 Fire/Police building and for its durability, ease of maintenance and low cost. So was the polished cinderblock used in every hallway, elevator lobby and all the rooms and offices that do not have traditional sheetrock walls. Unfinished block and painted drywall hardly seems lavish.
2) The dormitory space is vital to our operations, especially during emergencies and weather events. When we are required to order officers to stay for double shifts with only eight hours off between sixteen hour work periods, we need to be able to provide them somewhere to rest. Many officers live 45 minutes to over an hour away and eight hours is just not enough time to commute both ways, perhaps grab a meal and get adequate sleep. Especially during emergencies, we need our personnel to be well rested to maximize safety and efficiency.
The dormitory is three connecting rooms that provide sleeping accommodations for 14 employees (a typical patrol shift) and totals about 1,080 square feet – around the size of a typical two-bedroom apartment. You might “certainly like to live” in a two-bedroom apartment with 13 other people. I can’t say I relish the thought.
3) The new building is outfitted with 13 adult detention cells – the exact same number of adult cells as were in the 1938 Fire/Police building. The four additional cells are two youth cells (we had no youth holding facilities in the former building), a handicapped-accessible cell (required in a new public building by the ADA) and a single, large communal temporary holding cell in our prisoner processing area. We have had access to the same number of adult detention cells for over 70 years. I am not aware of it being an issue to date.
4) Relative to your observation the building is outfitted with “very well accomplished wood finishes including trimwork that I could easily say is the best of the best,” thanks for the compliment. You certainly can’t consider wood to be an exotic building material. That the municipality hired skilled workers who were required to meet an exacting standard of craftsmanship can’t be a bad thing for taxpayers, can it?
5) The building is far from too large. It was constructed to meet our needs for fifty years. In fact, at 53,000 square feet, it is 10,000 square feet smaller than was recommended when the initial studies were conducted at the start of the project in the early 1990’s.
6) The Town did not own all of the land involved. If you recall, the Town was required to purchase and raze the former “Judy’s Nails” building on Mason Street to make adequate space available. You can’t really be surprised that it cost more per square foot to construct a large building with an attached 167-vehicle parking structure in the heart of downtown Greenwich than it did to build a similar one with surface parking on a vacant lot in an industrual section of South Norwalk. The fact of the matter is that the building project was finished on budget and ahead of schedule. I can’t imagine the Town wanting more than that.
I any event, I am glad you enjoyed your tour. Feel free to stop by again anytime. Usually we have to drag our guests down here kicking and screaming … literally.
Respectfully,
Lt. Mark Kordick
Administrative Lieutenant
Greenwich Police Department
Comment by Lt. Mark Kordick — February 25th, 2010 @ 9:44 pm
I agree with you that a nice,brick facility could have been built for much less. The garage area is probably the more important part of any such facility. But, the Public Safety Center was a boondoggle from the get-go. It’s just too elaborate a facility.
Comment by Jonathan Wilcox — March 3rd, 2010 @ 9:50 am
Wait a minute. We spend $30 million for a brand new police facility, but it has no more jail cells than it did in 1938? And the town has experienced twenty years of declining crime rates. So tell me again why we spent so much on a brand new complex when the only increase was four jail cells, two of which are for “youth”? Did we really need to do that?
Greenwich employs far more police per 1,000 population than just about any other town in Connecticut, except for our crime-ridden big cities. We spend tens of millions on a sparkling new police HQ. Yet we can’t be bothered to build a second high school that is badly needed (Greenwich High School is the second biggest in the entire state, only slightly smaller that the public high school in economically depressed New Britain). We can’t even construct a new auditorium for that school, even though the one that’s there was too small decades ago when it was first built.
And what is this focus on arresting young people in this town? Why are scores of kids getting arrested for smoking pot, an offense that warrants no more than a ticket in neighboring Massachusetts? Why can we find all the money we need to employ police officers to arrest kids for pot, but we are scrimping on employing teachers, going over the top range for students per class at some schools?
Something is very wrong with our priorities in Greenwich.
Comment by Sean — March 5th, 2010 @ 3:53 pm