Board gets peek at $5 million police station plan

A rendering of a new police headquarters from the southeast. KG+D Architects

By THANE GRAUEL

The Pound Ridge Town Board on Tuesday got a look at potential plans to replace the existing police station on Westchester Avenue.

Two possible locations on the Town House campus are being considered — one in front of the existing station on the eastern side of the property, with most of its parking behind it, and the other at the far west side, to the left of the Town House.

The estimated cost is up to $5 million, according to the presentation by Eric Kaeyer, a principal at KG+D Architects of Mount Kisco.

That’s a pretty big ask for the town’s 2,000 or so residents, particularly at a time when taxpayers are being asked to pay an additional $3.5 million for a fire headquarters upgrade (with a total cost now estimated around $9.87 million).

The board, which met without Town Supervisor Kevin Hansan, had some questions, but no action was planned on the matter. 

The existing structure is 757 square feet. The new plans would more than triple that size with a 2,695-square-foot building.  

Kaeyer said the new building would have space for a department of 30 people and that the existing building would have to remain usable during an expansion or new construction. The septic system would be replaced. The new building would house a headquarters for the Pound Ridge Office of Emergency Management and space for a court clerk’s office and court storage.

“It was our charge to make sure that this building is construction cost-effective,” Kaeyer said, “and that the building itself is in character with the town and the Town Hall property.”

“There’s a lot of program space that’s not currently in that existing building,” he said. “And that’s why the new building would need to be larger.”

In addition to the court clerk’s space and the emergency management area, the new space would include an interview room, an office for supervisors and a juvenile room, and a dedicated gear room.

“Today there is one locker room for both men and women. So, these women officers, they have to change in a different area,” Kaeyer said. “And so there’s a room that’s dedicated for them.”

“One other thing is, there should be a sally, port or garage, so that officers that come in, and they come in with somebody that needs to be processed, they can go directly into a garage bay,” he said. “The garage door can close, they can take the person out that needs to be processed and taken in a separate entrance and brought into the building for questioning.”

“The nice thing about having an interview room that you’re not bringing a person through the building is, if you’re having private conversations in the building,” said Police Chief Thomas Mulcahy. “The general public isn’t walking down the hallway, like if somebody was in my office having a conversation with me and in the room right next door is someone interviewing about a damaged mailbox.”

The public had a couple questions, so did board member Dan Paschkes, including about parking and energy efficiency.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked. “How do we take the excellent progress that you’ve made today, the comments that you’ve heard from us here tonight, and incorporate them in. And how do we now move forward to the next step?”

“The planning committee will reconvene,” Kaeyer said. “We will discuss what we heard here and then the planning committee will give us direction as to how to proceed. And then we can proceed and hopefully come back in front of you, sometime in the near future, with a slightly modified design.”