Glen Ellyn weighing spending more on new police station
Glen Ellyn trustees are considering increasing the $12 million budget for a new police station near Panfish Park.
The village board agreed this summer to issue $13.43 million in bonds, about $1.5 million of which will finance a separate project to alleviate flooding when Lake Ellyn overflows. The rest of the loan was set aside for the construction of the station - currently designed as two separate buildings - on four acres of land the village owns along Park Boulevard, a few blocks south of Roosevelt Road.
Police Chief Phil Norton told the board on Monday that designing the station under that spending plan is "really restricted." Norton said a team of architects, general contractors and village officials have shrunk the footprint of the two buildings to 31,500 square feet, 29 percent smaller than what consultants recommended for a department of Glen Ellyn's size in a study.
"There wasn't a lot of extravagance built in," Norton said of floor plans.
The budget could now range from $13 million to $15 million, but trustees are still reviewing the project's scope, Village Manager Mark Franz said. Prime among the expenses under review is the smaller, one-story, 4,000 square-foot building, which would house a roughly $1.4 million shooting range and vehicle processing bays.
Trustee Tim Elliott has suggested officers train in the College of DuPage's shooting range, which opened in August. And on Monday, Elliott, an attorney for the college, urged the board to "stay within the $12 million budget we set for this."
But police said the on-site range would improve training and allow an instructor to work with one or two officers at a time and better "identify deficiencies." Officers have used Wheaton police's shooting range, which limits training time, Norton and Deputy Chief Bob Acton wrote in a memo to the board.
Several parents took aim at an idea that was raised last year to open the shooting range to public training courses.
"That is a risk I do not want to see us take," said Angela Fanella who raised concerns about "the number of weapons being brought into Glen Ellyn."
Another consideration is whether to buy a fourth home crews would demolish to make way for the station. The village has a contract pending for the purchase, and razing the property would offer better access to the station and a buffer for the neighborhood to the south, Franz said.
On the revenue side, the village could "get creative" and spend other funds in addition to the bonds, Franz said. About $1.2 million seized during arrests on drug charges could pay for secure jail facilities, evidence storage and other costs allowed under federal law, Franz said. And an estimated $350,000 from the capital fund could pay for improvements to Panfish Park.
Leopardo, the village-hired construction firm, and Dewberry, the architectural firm, began putting pen to paper about two months ago, and got a better sense of the challenges of the site, including a flood plain on the east side, architects said. As a result, the firms recommend putting the main building close to Park Boulevard.
The main, 27,600-square-foot, two-story building would offer more room for investigations and evidence storage, "critically undersized" in the nearly 12,000 square foot of space that houses the department of 40 sworn officers in the first floor of the Civic Center, originally designed as a school, Norton said.
"One of the things we've learned in this process especially lately is trying to avoid incorporating the wrong way of doing things into the new building," Norton said. "We've become accustomed to doing things in many areas the wrong way because of the space limitations we've had."
Budget discussions could slightly delay the start of construction, Franz said. The village previously planned to break ground on the long-awaited building in spring 2016.