Connors Cottage residents oppose Portsmouth police station design: New plan in works

PORTSMOUTH — A group of Connors Cottage residents presented the City Council with a petition opposing the most recent plan for the renovation and addition to the city’s police station .

Connors Cottage is a Portsmouth Housing Authority building for residents 62 and older located on the City Hall municipal campus near the existing police station.

Eighteen of the 20 residents in Connors Cottage signed the petition in opposition to the last redevelopment plan, which was shared with the public in May, according to resident Lucille Therrien, who organized the initiative.

The petition states in part that the “extension project for the police station, if located where it is planned, will directly affect us.”

The most recent design plan shared by city officials in May called for putting an addition in front of the existing police station.

Connors Cottage residents share their concerns

Many residents have opposed the proposal, after learning the addition would block the views from City Hall of the North Church, the Middle School and other parts of downtown, and could force the removal of cherry trees near the banks of the South Mill Pond.

“The most threatening fact is that we the residents would be the most harmed. We would be on an island with construction going on on both sides of our building,” the petition signed by Connors Cottage residents said. They would be facing “dust, noise, constant disruption and all-day stress.”

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Therrien, who appeared at a recent City Council meeting, said her building is home to “retired medical personnel, widowers, widows, artists, musicians, authors, and more. In order to not jeopardize our well-being and peace, I would suggest the lower parking lot for an extension (of the police station) since the police want to remain close to home."

Connors Cottage resident Patricia Robinson told city councilors she loves Portsmouth and has “really enjoyed” her time living in the building.

She pointed to the views of the City Hall campus as people approach it.

“It’s welcoming, it’s inspiring, it’s embracing of the city,” she said. “From here you can see a lot of the landmarks in the city.”

If the addition moves forward as planned, Robinson said, “it’s going to close us off, but it’s also going to close the approach, especially from town.”

“My understanding is there’s going to be trees moved and all that sort of thing,” she said. “It’s something that we can’t envision being gone, but once it’s gone it’s not restorable.”

Complaints heard 'loud and clear'

Joe Almeida, the city’s facilities director, said city staff are “busy having meetings developing design concepts that respond directly to all of the concerns we’ve heard over the past year and a half.”

“Primarily we heard loud and clear of the desire to minimize the impact to the front view shed in front of City Hall,” Almeida, a member of the police station working group, said during a recent City Council meeting.

He added later, "We haven’t put much attention at all into the previous concept that was not … met with excitement. We’ve left that to the side for now."

He reported, "We currently have three concepts before us that we continue to develop. Some of them have no building whatsoever on the front portion of City Hall … aesthetically they’re successful, in reality they’re not successful to the program at all. It creates a very difficult program for the police department to not have their spaces, the adjacencies are very important to the various functions of the PD.”

Staff have worked on “some concepts that have a much smaller addition on the front, that minimally impact view sheds, but it’s nothing like the full station going out along the drive,” he said. “We are also very responsive to the idea of using as much of the station as we possibly can, so we are doing that.”

He noted “the more we commit to the building, we start to affect other people in other departments.

“We’re trying not to move other departments in City Hall because those are just projects that would have to happen before the station got their attention,” he told the council. “It’s a very fine line to walk. I look forward to presenting the concepts soon.”

City staff have an upcoming meeting with the working group, according to Almeida, and they plan to present the newest concepts.

The meetings of the working group have not been open to the public.

City Manager Karen Conard said city staff likely won’t present the new concepts to the City Council until September.

Mayor Deaglan McEachern stated “there’s going to be a lot of advanced notice” when the new police station concept or concepts are presented.

“We have purposely not had a lot going on in the summer because we don’t expect everybody to use their nice summer days  …to be in here,” McEachern said.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Connors Cottage residents oppose Portsmouth police station design: New plan in works