Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
FOX4 News Kansas City
New $73 million Lenexa Justice Center opens Monday
By Kevin Barry,
1 day ago
LENEXA, Kan. — Police and municipal court business moved about three miles west Monday morning in Lenexa.
The new Lenexa Justice Center at 17371 Prairie Star Parkway drastically increases the space for city courts and police department operations in a city that has seen rapid population growth in the last few decades.
“Lenexa is one of the fastest-growing communities in the state and we’re able to, at the Lenexa Justice Center, build for the present but for the future,” said Lenexa Police Department Public Information Officer Danny Chavez.
“We’re talking 50-60 years from now, what is Lenexa’s population going to look like.”
The new facility is more centrally located in the city that is roughly 11 miles wide from its eastern boundary to its western city limit. The previous location was closer to the Missouri state line than it was to parts of western Lenexa.
The lobby at the new Lenexa Justice Center has a community room in the publicly-accessible area, allowing community groups to hold public meetings there.
The new Municipal Court Room allows more space to speak with a Judge in the middle of the room with additional space to the sides where citizens can work out their cases.
The common area in the Police Department gives officers a place to eat and relax while also letting them host family at the station.
Traditional police interview rooms are used to interview people suspected of a crime.
Softer interview rooms are more inviting for people who have been the victim of a crime
Lexi Blue stands by to comfort someone having a difficult conversation in an interview room.
The Lenexa Police Department Media Room will help the department create content to get information to more citizens.
Dispatchers have a more centralized location in the new Lenexa Justice Center with more lighting and extra space for when the Police Department eventually has to expand or add capacity
Quiet Rooms give officers and dispatchers a private space after especially challenging calls.
Large lockers give officers a place to keep belongings underneath the letters that used to be outside the departments original location.
Officers get their assignments for the day in Roll Call
Expanded space for writing police reports gives officers more flexibility for how to be comfortable.
This is where the police keep the K-9 unit dogs
Holding cells allows Lenexa Police to temporarily hold people they detain before transporting them to the County Jail or releasing them.
An interview room near the holding cells allows officers to speak with suspects without having to bring them through the entire department.
Expanded garage and meeting space allow all of the department’s equipment to be in one location.
Expanded garage and meeting space allow all of the department’s equipment to be in one location.
The large Community Room is available for the public to hold any kind of event.
Outdoor turf expands out from the Lenexa PD gym, giving any of the Department’s employees a chance to work out.
The new location gave the department the chance to redesign multiple aspects of how the building works, installing new features that reflect the modern best-practices while also reorganizing workflow.
Large conference rooms for professional training allow Lenexa to host professional development seminars for departments across the region and country.
Larger and more secure evidence processing space makes it easier to handle and track evidence that might be needed in court.
More storage space lets the department store all its extra equipment and large vehicles in one location after having to spread them out in multiple locations across the city before.
A new weight room with outdoor turf space is part of the effort to recruit and keep new officers.
“Of course, pay is important, culture is important, benefits are important, and we think we do all of those well in Lenexa but also having a physical space that we think is aesthetically pleasing,” said Chavez.
Softer interview rooms with couches and soft chairs allow people who have been the victim of a crime to speak with detectives in a more comfortable space than traditional police interview rooms.
The new municipal court has a more streamlined security area with more space for people to go before a judge or work out cases along the side of the courtroom.
Local groups are encouraged to use the public community room right off the lobby for any events, even if they don’t have anything to do with the Police Department.
“It’s our desire to interact with our community in positive ways in addition to those ways that life just brings along,” said Officer Chavez.
“So, we do that during community policing events throughout the community but also by being a host by opening up our space, invite people to come in and interact with our personnel.”
The $73 million project comes five years after the first studies looked at how the Police Department and Municipal Court was meeting community needs.
Lenexa will keep operating a fire station out of the old location while the city determines how to use the rest of the space.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.
Most Popular
Comments / 0