Exterior Design

City reveals green, public-pleasant design for $18.5M police headquarters

The layout of the city’s new $18.5 million police headquarters has been found out, and officers say the construction — to be energy green and surrounded using parkland — will be an asset for police and the public. Police Captain Anthony Brixius said the police branch is enthusiastic about the function and appearance of the headquarters. The way the public sgets entry to the police is advanced by the construction’s area inside a public park and the building’s design itself.

“I think it’s going to be a great network space and will deliver some human beings collectively,” Brixius said. The about 50,000-rectangular-foot constructing will let the department move out of the downtown Judicial and Law Enforcement Center, which it stocks with Douglas County District Court and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. The new building will residence the police department’s patrol, facts, IT, evidence, and management divisions. About 20 percent of the constructing could be partially finished space that could allow the branch’s investigations division to discover inside the headquarters in destiny.

police headquarters

An inexperienced layout

In August, the Lawrence City Commission legal a $1.35 million architectural services settlement with Leawood company Hoefer Wysocki for the police headquarters. The headquarters can be built on undeveloped land owned through the town near Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive, and the online website plan also includes a city park. A plan for the park has even been finished. However, that venture is not but funded.

Municipal Services and Operations Assistant Director Melinda Harger said that, in line with a course from the City Commission, the headquarters’ layout focused on energy efficiency. That consists of mechanical systems which are 30 percent extra efficient than the constructing code minimal, a hundred percent LED lights with motion controls, large overhangs for shading, a reflective roof and non-stop insulation, consistent with a memo to the commission.

“There are lots of day-lights, and a few excellent glazing for the outdoors partitions, so it permits all that sunlight hours in and lets in a few without a doubt first-rate perspectives of all the ones mature trees that we’re keeping on the website,” Harger stated.

Other inexperienced building factors mentioned in the memo consist of using nearby and regional constructing materials, usage of the present streambed for stormwater detention, and nonirrigated, natural landscaping on most people of the site.

Brixius stated in contrast to the downtown construction or the branch’s training center in west Lawrence. The headquarters would genuinely be designed for police use. He said there might be a clear public entrance and another front for all department personnel on the bottom of the building, which opens onto a centralized entry vicinity and break room for all workers. He stated the layout creates camaraderie and increases the ability to speak.

“That became one of the key things that we surely desired,” Brixius said. “We talk approximately bringing each person returned together, and that wasn’t simply building area, but that turned into certainly to your daily work life.”

The headquarters is the first phase of what will be a campus that the city hopes will, in the end, residence all of the police department operations. The procedure started with a prioritized list of what to encompass within the headquarters design. Though the headquarters will allow the police branch to transport out of the downtown vicinity, a few department bodies of workers will nonetheless be running inside the investigations and training center, placed at 4820 Bob Billings Parkway.

The headquarters will contain about eleven 000 square ft of shelf space, according to Harger. Shell space in the principal building will ultimately residence the investigations department, and the plans additionally name for a shell outbuilding. The outbuilding will, in the end, permit the department to move its four crisis response vehicles from the previous fire station on Stone Barn Terrace to the headquarters, which Brixius said will enhance response times.

Harger said that adding the empty area now will store the metropolis lots of money while having to feature onto the constructing later.

City personnel recently directed the layout group to continue with $1.Eight million in budget discounts and exchange bid objects to maintain the challenge within finances, in keeping with the memo. Regarding the price range discounts, Harger stated the city aimed to get as many operations as viable into the headquarters with the cash budgeted, and intentionally designed options or destiny objects that might need to be scaled back.

Judith Barnes

I am a freelance writer and blogger based in New York City. I love to write about home design, landscaping, architecture, gardens, real estate, and exterior design. I also run a blog called Mypropertal, where I share tips about home and garden improvement projects. In addition to writing, I work part-time as a social media manager for a real estate company in NYC.

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