Architect picked for police building

East Lyme officials moving ahead with public safety facility

East Lyme — The Board of Selectmen on Wednesday chose an architectural firm to complete renovation design plans needed for the town’s future policing and public safety facility.

Silver, Petrucelli & Associates, an architectural and design firm based out of Hamden and with offices in New London, will redesign the former Honeywell office building at 277 W. Main St. into a state-of-theart policing and public safety facility that will “serve the town for the next 50 years,” First Selectman Mark Nickerson said by phone Thursday.

“We are very confident with their ability,” Nickerson said. “They came in at a good, competitive price, and they are a proven firm with a great reputation.”

The 30,000-square-foot Honeywell building, which sits on 17 acres on the far western side of town, was chosen by officials last year as the site for a new policing facility. Nickerson announced the proposal to purchase and renovate the building last November, with voters passing the proposed $5 million plan at referendum in February.

Plans for the building outline consolidating the town’s dispatch center, fire marshal’s office and emergency operations center, which currently are housed in Flanders, with police, while plans for the police department include training rooms, locker rooms, office space and conference rooms, as well as a sally port and holding cells, said Paul Dagle, a selectman and chair of the Public Safety Building Vision Committee, which is overseeing the renovation of the facility.

The proposed building also would include an evidence room, armory and storage, all of which are now housed at the Waterford Police Department.

The town’s 24-officer police force currently is housed in a small building on Main Street, which the town leases from Millstone Power Station owner Dominion Energy for $1 a year.

The Honeywell building was purchased for $2.77 million in May, leaving an additional $2.23 million approved for design and construction costs, among other expenses, to renovate the office building.

The committee, after a lengthy request for qualification and research process, unanimously selected Silver, Petrucelli & Associates at a meeting earlier this month before forwarding their selection to the Board of Selectmen for approval, Dagle said.

Dagle said design costs will fall somewhere between $110,000 and $137,500, depending on which services the Vision Committee decides to pay for.

Nickerson said the design period will last four to five months and that the building may be move-in ready by the summer or fall of 2020. Town officials will negotiate and sign the contract with the firm next week, he said.

“It’s a slow process, but it’s a very confident building process where I know the town will be set for the next 50 years on this building,” Nickerson said. “We want to do it right and we want to do it once and we want to be confident of the scope of work that will be done.”

Dagle said that based on qualifications, cost and scheduling, Silver, Petrucelli & Associates was the right choice and had “the right renovation experience applicable to our task of renovating the building.”

“Not that the other firms didn’t have that, but we thought they would do a good job,” Dagle said. “We felt they gave us the best chance of coming out with the best results in the end, the best public safety building to serve the needs of the town.”