Over the past few months, Beaver Dam police officials have shared their opinion that the best way relocate the department to the old YMCA property would be to start from scratch.
A newly completed study by MSA Integrated Project Delivery backs them up.
MSA took on the project at the urging of the city council as an extension of an original “space needs study” completed in October 2008. After the city purchased the former YMCA property for $75,000, it wanted MSA to determine the best use for that facility.
“It seems appropriate to recommend a new police station on this site versus one of the other considered uses,” the study reports. “The city hall will have ample space to renovate and expand into once the police station relocates. The community activities & services center facility will probably require a new site that is larger than the former YMCA site to accommodate the substantial site requirements for tour buses, multiple handicap parking stalls and garden plots.”
Determining the best use for the site was the first step. The second was analyzing the current building and deciding whether renovation or a complete reconstruction was the better course of action.
Although a cost comparison shows a complete construction would cost the city $5.25 million as opposed to $4.4 for a renovation, the study recommends new construction.
“These costs are close enough that MSA recommends deconstructing the existing building, reclaiming building materials as appropriate and designing and building a new police facility on this site,” the report reads.
Perhaps the factor that tipped the scales in favor of reconstruction was the ability to design a new facility to best meet the department’s needs.
“A new building gives the city the opportunity to design without compromise. Using the existing facility would most surely require compromise with any new program layout and require the new use to design around existing building conditions. . . this building will have difficulty having adapting to the use of another highly specialized building type.”
The report also says that while the building exterior may seem acceptable, it masks many basic design issues and that the building is in a general state of disrepair. There are significant mold and asbestos issues and the exterior bearing walls have cracks. The mechanical and electrical systems are out of date and the roof is in need of replacement.
Because of these issues, a renovation would require complete gutting, taken down to its basic structure and reconfigured for the police department’s use before construction.
Regarding police department use, the study reports that the 1.75-acre site has good access to Park Avenue and Washington Street and would allow for adequate parking in addition to a building footprint of 30,000 square feet.
The space needs study completed last year placed the police department’s space needs as the city’s top priority.
But early this year the city council rejected a resolution which would have began a two-year process of renovating city hall, including a much-needed expansion of police department space.
The resolution would have led to an additional $330,000 of borrowing in 2009 and would have funded preliminary architectural and design work, paving the way for an approximate $5 million renovation in 2010.
City council president Jon Litscher shared the concerns of several alderpersons.
“If we move forward at this time, in my opinion, we’re committing to a taxation situation in a potentially very, very troublesome year,” Litscher said. “While I support wholeheartedly the renovation of the police department, I think this is the wrong time to do this.”
The city council will review the MSA study during Monday night’s meeting at city hall. Sometime over the next several months the body will have to decide whether or not it wants to commit to the project by including engineering and design work in the 2010 capital improvement plan and construction in 2011, a timeline favored by Mayor Tom Kennedy.