Glen Ellyn OKs $14 million for new police station, flood relief
Glen Ellyn will borrow up to $14 million to finance construction of a police station by Panfish Park and a separate project aimed at redirecting floodwaters away from homes near Lake Ellyn.
Trustees unanimously approved a measure that gives the village authority to take on the debt. Principal and interest payments on the loan are expected to cost the village's capital project fund just less than $1 million annually for two decades.
About $12 million will be reserved for building the police station off Park Boulevard on now-vacant land after three homes the village purchased were torn down.
With the funding plan in place, a committee of village leaders and police will begin the task of designing the station after years of talks about relocating the department from a building meant not for cops but for junior high students.
The village board could hire a team of architects and general contractors next month. Of the seven teams who turned in their qualifications, the committee will interview four, Assistant Police Chief Bill Holmer said Tuesday.
The sworn force of 40 officers is currently housed in a cramped, 11,000-square-foot section of the first floor of the downtown Civic Center, the former junior high on Duane Street bought by the village in the 1970s. While there have been fixes and reconfigurations over the years, police say they're challenged by a lack of space for storing evidence and records, parking constraints in a lot behind businesses and security issues.
The department keeps an armory in an old janitor's closet. Investigators interview suspects in rooms next to offices, raising privacy concerns. Four sergeants use one office. And there's no sally port where police can safely bring in prisoners.
By approving the financing, Holmer said the board “sees the need we have and wants to, at this point, take the necessary steps forward to improve things in here and create a facility the village can be proud of.”
No architectural renderings have been prepared, but Holmer says the station likely will cover roughly 35,000 square feet, though that's a conceptual footprint. Shovels also will likely hit the ground in spring 2016. Meanwhile, about $1.5 million from the loan will pay for another phase of work intended to lessen flooding around the man-made Lake Ellyn.
As part of the project, a drain will be expanded next spring so water flows “much more expeditiously” out of the lake and underground, Village Manager Mark Franz said. Grants are expected to reimburse the village for some of the drain work.
The village also plans to purchase two homes on Riford Road (the contracts are pending). One of the homes will be demolished, and the village will sell the other after the project is complete.
The neighborhood is susceptible to flooding when Lake Ellyn overflows, and water tends to travel into the Perry Nature Preserve, crosses Riford Road and continues east between homes, said Bob Minix, the village's engineer.
Buying the properties will give the village more room to regrade or contour the ground to prevent pools of water and better control its course. That portion of the project hasn't been scheduled yet.
Eventually, excess Lake Ellyn water ends up in the DuPage River's east branch.
“Right now, it's kind of just haphazard where the water goes,” Minix said. “It's just based on the existing elevations. The regrading would be more of a concrete design or a more deliberate attempt to direct the water in a particular direction.”