MARSHFIELD, WI (OnFocus) City staff is recommending the remodel and expansion of the nearly 40 year-old police station instead of constructing a new facility.
A space needs study completed last July and presented to the Common Council verified the need for more space and identified inefficiencies in the current layout that could be corrected through remodeling.
The costs for expansion and remodeling is $3.5-6.3 million depending on the project scope. Some of these costs would overlap with remodeling that would be needed anyway in the next 5-10 years to bring the building up to standard, at a cost of $1.7-2.5 million.
The Common Council had directed a site evaluation to determine whether to stay at the current location or invest in a new location. A new building would cost between $11-14 million, not including the site acquisition cost.
“The scope of the work was to evaluate our existing site against other potential sites to identify what makes other sites better, and what makes our current site deficient,” said Dan Knoeck, Director of Public Works. “It wasn’t necessarily to pick a new site, but it’s essentially just to understand what makes our site deficient and what what would be better in an ideal site.”
A designated staff team narrowed down their lists of potential sites for a new building to eight and rated each. The current site at 110 W 1st Street off of Central Avenue ranked third due to its central location and public accessibility, plus the fact that expansion and remodeling costs would be less than a new building.
Downsides of the current station are that it is small (1 acre), has limited expansion potential, and that expansion to the south impacts parking.
“The biggest shortfall of our existing site is the size and expansion. However, the city-owned land to the south of that mitigates that shortfall,” said Knoeck. “That parking lot does provide us some opportunity to expand the existing building on-site.”
Ultimately, city staff recommended use of the existing site, less than half the cost of a new site. Expansion would take place south of the building into the parking area with garage space added to the west.
Action will be taken by the Common Council at its next meeting on March 12.
Author: News Desk
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