Revised Portsmouth police station design 'making progress' after last one was criticized

PORTSMOUTH — City staff are “grinding along” as they continue to work on a revised plan to expand and renovate the existing police station , according to Department of Public Works Director Peter Rice.

“We have been focusing on the back portion of the building, trying to get as much as possible out of the front,” Rice told the City Council during a recent update on the project. “We’re looking at the possibility of some infill in some areas so you don’t visually see it from across the pond, but it’s some space outside the front of the building that potentially could be expanded into.”

City staff have been working to adjust the expansion plan after hearing negative feedback from the public about its proposal to put an addition in front of the existing station.

That addition, Rice has acknowledged, would block the view of the South Mill Pond, nearby cherry trees, the North Church and the middle school.

Timeline to present updates

Rice told the council at a meeting earlier this month “there’s some interesting ideas that are coming out of” the discussions city staff have been having about the city’s new community policing facility.

“They’re not ready to be rolled out because we haven’t vetted them fully,” Rice said.

But city staff hope to present the new plans to the Police Station Working Group “toward the end of August with the thought that sometime in September we might be able to come back to you,” Rice told the City Council.

“The process has been very informative along the way, we’ve met with a number of residents, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from folks relative to what they value on this site."

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He assured the council “we are making progress. Projects like this are time consuming, they do take a lot of coordination between different entities, there’s this dynamic between the want and then the need."

He reported city staff “are constantly making adjustments to try to make sure we’re cognizant of your goals, stay within budget, minimize the visual impacts (and) reuse the existing building as much as possible.”

City staff has also solicited proposals from three firms to do a staffing needs assessment, he said.

That assessment would “update the previous ones that have been done and would give the council a better feeling for what the modern policing needs are,” he said.

Mayor Deaglan McEachern thanked Rice for the updates he’s been giving the council at recent meetings.

He told the public that “if there’s going to be a substantial update, we will have this at the beginning or close to the beginning of a meeting.”

Rice added he heard concerns that “decisions are being made without the public being informed. It is not our intent to do that."

How much could police station cost?

The projected cost for renovating the existing station in the City Hall complex, along with building a new addition, is $41.8 million.

That’s about $29 million lower than the $70 million-plus estimates the council received in December on a new station at several potential sites.

A total of $42.2 million has been identified in the city’s CIP for the project.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Revised Portsmouth police station design 'making progress' after last one was criticized