Ex-newspaper office becoming Terre Haute police headquarters

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) - Officials have chosen the former offices of Terre Haute's daily newspaper as the new location for the western Indiana city's new police headquarters.

The city has borrowed about $11 million to buy the 46,000-square-foot (14,020-square-meter) former Tribune-Star building from a construction company and renovate it. Mayor Duke Bennett said the renovation work on the downtown building should be completed by August, the newspaper reported.

City officials had been considering building a new police headquarters, but they began looking to buy the Tribune-Star building after the newspaper's offices moved in 2019 to a shopping plaza on the city's east side.

'œWe are getting a bigger building than what we were going to build (and) at a lesser cost, so it is an almost perfect scenario,'ť Bennett said. 'œIt is in the downtown area and close to our existing facility, and we are putting a vacant building back into use.'ť

Police Chief Shawn Keen said the building 'œwill allow us to do things we can't currently do at our site now,'ť such as having three training rooms available. Plans also include administrative and detective office space, a vault for storage of weapons and ammunition, an evidence lock-up room and a crime lab.