Designers for police, fire stations eyed

City Council to consider contracts with architects

FAYETTEVILLE — New police and fire stations will foster better departments, which will lead to a safer and better-served city, administrators say. And it all starts with the buildings’ design.

The City Council on Tuesday will consider contracts with architects to design a police headquarters and prototype for fire stations.

An estimated 80,000square-foot campus will serve as operations base for the city’s police, replacing the former J.C. Penney automotive center officers have called home at the downtown square since 1993. Room to operate will quadruple. The headquarters will border a

new fire station at the northeast corner of Deane Street and Porter Road, just south of Interstate 49.

Another fire station will be at 2260 S. School Ave., east of a neighborhood and B-Unlimited Headquarters. The city is under contract to buy the land. Each station should be about 7,500 square feet.

Bond issues voters passed in April will pay for the buildings.

APPROPRIATE ACCOMMODATIONS

Police Chief Mike Reynolds and a team of department and city officials meet weekly to discuss the project. The department needs an architect who has experience building police facilities and can design one for at least the next 20 years, he said.

Brinkley Sargent Wiginton Architects from Dallas was tentatively selected to design the headquarters for $2.9 million. The firm designed a 100,000-square-foot public safety training center in Round Rock, Texas; an 85,000-square-foot municipal court and council chamber complex in Artesia, N.M.; and the University of Oklahoma’s Police Department in Norman, Okla., among others.

Reynolds said he was hired in 1993 and remembers having a locker in a hall because of tight space.

“I’m not looking to build the Taj Mahal, but obviously we want to build something that meets not only the demand of our Police Department today, but also meet the demands in the future,” he said.

The headquarters will consist of an estimated 56,000-square-foot main station; 13,000-square-foot support building for evidence and vehicle storage and 11,000-square-foot indoor firing range. Reynolds said the buildings will be oriented so they can be expanded.

The department will have a forensic computer lab to process electronics or online transactions as evidence, Reynolds said. A forensic crime lab will have proper ventilation and accommodations to handle controlled substances. Officers process evidence now out of essentially a closet.

The department will be able to simulate scenarios with its indoor firing range, better training officers, Reynolds said. On-campus exercise equipment will make it easy for officers to maintain physical health, he said.

Mayor Lioneld Jordan has said the city is considering moving the Parks Department to the police station on Rock Street, and moving the vehicle fleet to the parks building on Happy Hollow Road.

Miller Boskus Lack Architects of Fayetteville was tentatively selected to provide the design for the fire stations. Fire Chief Brad Hardin said the city wants a prototype. The contract the City Council will consider is for $660,735.

Two stations will be built within the next three years as part of the city’s first phase of bond projects, Hardin said. The third, as promised to voters, will happen in a later phase. A location hasn’t been determined for the third station.

Hardin said the department opted for smaller-scale stations blending into surrounding homes and businesses. Firefighters were asked what they wanted to have in a new station.

“The main thing we want is something small, functional and affordable,” he said. “Some of these fire stations out there, they cover 6 acres, and they’re works of art. We’re wanting something a little more reserved.”

Each station will house one fire company, which consists of a truck, a captain, a driver and a firefighter.

MEETING DEMAND

It’s important for any public safety department to get the design of a facility right, said Buck Mims, chief executive officer of the National Public Safety Group, a consulting firm helping departments find the software, equipment and buildings they need.

Federal, state and local standards for public safety have grown over the years with new technology, and the buildings from which departments operate have to accommodate the changes, Mims said. It was common practice a few decades ago to house a department in a retrofitted space, he said.

Server rooms have to have proper ventilation and hookups, radio systems have drastically evolved and evidence handling has become more meticulous, Mims said. More women serve in public safety today, and buildings designed decades ago often don’t have proper accommodations, he said.

“It’s not so easy to stick somebody in a shoebox anymore, so to speak,” Mims said. “It’s just not conducive.”

Building a facility with future needs in mind also extends

the life of the building, which saves taxpayer dollars, he said.

Springdale residents passed a $41 million bond issue for a new criminal justice center for police and courts and a major renovation of City Hall. The criminal justice center should finish construction next fall, according to a city spokeswoman.

Springdale voters also passed a $17.6 million issue for firefighters. A new fire station on Har-Ber Avenue opened in July, Fire Chief Mike Irwin said. A second on Huntsville Avenue is about halfway complete. A third on Downrum Road should start construction early next year, he said.

Rogers voters passed an $11.5 million police bond issue and $9.5 million for fire in August 2018. A new dispatch center for the Police Department is in the design phase and should break ground in February, Officer Keith Foster said. A new fire station is under construction at West Pleasant Grove Road near Shadow Valley Country Club and should open in June, Fire Chief Tom Jenkins said.

Bentonville has finished construction of a 21,600-square-foot 911 Center and Criminal Investigations Division building south of the main police station. The 911 team has moved into the facility and most of the criminal investigations operations are up and running, Officer Gene Page said. A grand opening is planned for early next year, he said.

WHERE WE’RE AT

More than $38 million is available to plan and build the police headquarters. The city will have to spend at least 80% of that money and have the remaining balance contractually committed within the next three years to comply with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, said Paul Becker, the city’s chief financial officer. That’s the case with all of the bonds that have been issued.

The Fire Department has about $10.5 million to plan and build two of three new fire stations and potentially buy land for a third station. The total authorized from the bond issue voters approved for fire was nearly $16 million. The city hasn’t issued the bonds for the remaining amount.

The City Council and University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees agreed this fall on a deal to sell 12 acres of land the Division of Agriculture owns at Deane Street and Porter Road to the city for $2.59 million. The deal is set to close by the end of January, Assistant City Attorney Blake Pennington said.

The council also agreed to buy nearly two acres from Robert and Vickie Parker at 2260 S. School Ave. for the second fire station for $180,000. That deal is set to close Monday, Pennington said.

The actual square footage of the police campus and two fire stations could change after the architects put pencil to paper, said Wade Abernathy, the city’s facilities and building projects manager.

The police headquarters should take about a year to design and a year and a half to build, Abernathy said. It should open by June 2022, he said.

The fire station prototype should take about 10 months to design, with a yearlong construction period. The two stations should be finished by October 2021, Abernathy said.