New Bensenville Police & Emergency Management Headquarters Wins CISCO Project of the Year
The Village of Bensenville's new Police & Emergency Management Headquarters won the top honor in the rehabilitation category from The Construction Industry Service Corporation (CISCO) as part of their annual Pride in Construction Award Program.
"We are proud to recognize these projects, project teams and organizations for this prestigious award," said CISCO Executive Director Dan Allen. "We had the most entries in the history of the program, and clearly all of the entries are winners as the quality and community impact of each of these projects were evident to our Board members, who had the difficult task of choosing in each category. The projects we receive each year demonstrates that the union construction industry produces the best product anywhere in the world, and this year's entries and winners perfectly illustrates that point."
Among Rehabilitation projects, the Bensenville Police & Emergency Management Headquarters, 345 E. Green St., was the top vote-getter. The new 47,000 square foot headquarters is an adaptive reuse of a blighted industrial building that was vacant since 1998. The project was built to LEED Gold standards, making it over 20% more efficient than a standard building of its size.
"This was a project that all of our Bensenville residents should be proud of, we turned a vacant factory building into one of the area's finest Public Safety Buildings," said Village President Frank Soto. "It should be noted that, the building was completed on time and within budget."
This project was made possible by aggressively seeking out cost saving opportunities and programs to reduce the Village's out-of-pocket costs as much as possible. By staggering the bond issuances the Village had the ability to obtain Qualified Energy Conservation Bond (QECB) rebates through the DuPage County DCEO for more than $6 million of the overall bond issuance. By delaying a year for the second tract of bonds the Village achieved savings of $1.25 million due to the issued bonds being bank qualified.
As a result of being a green community and building the police station to LEED Gold standards, making it over 20% more efficient than a standard building of its size, the Village will receive a 70% federal rebate on all interest paid for these bonds. This drops the effective interest rate on the $6.185 million bonds to only 1.46% (from 4.88%). Savings are estimated to be at a minimum $550,000 and can grow to $1,500,000 by time the bonds are paid out. The Village has also been awarded $117,788 in grants to reimburse energy efficiency upgrades through DCEO's Illinois Energy Now program. Illinois Clean Energy has awarded $25,000 for the LEED Gold Certification process already underway. In an effort to support local business the Village made extra effort to advertise the bidding opportunities locally which resulted in awarding over $1 million dollars to Bensenville businesses.