Police Station Under Renovation—Dec. 11, 2024
A detectives' office at the Police Station. Credit: Michael Dinan
The $20 million renovation of the New Canaan Police Station on South Avenue—about $29 million with soft costs such as insurance and creating a temporary police headquarters downtown—is on time and budget, officials say.
Speaking from the bustling site on a rainy morning last week, Scott Tomkins, project manager with Turner Construction, told NewCanaanite.com during a tour that the work is going well and “we’re in good shape here.”
“We’ve got good things going on,” Tompkins said. “The main objective here is to get into the finishing stages. We’ve really now got to start moving ourselves out of the building so that the finish trades can come and do their work so that we can develop a quality project at the end.”
Town officials have discussed the need to renovate the Police Department at 167 South Ave. for many years. The widely anticipated project that launched about one year ago and has long been targeted to finish around Thanksgiving 2025 is seeing a complete gut and renovation of the existing 1927-built police station—the original New Canaan High School—with the addition of a new sallyport at the southeastern corner of the building.
Bill Walbert, chair of the Police Department Building Committee—along with Paul Foley, Paul Tully, Jim Beall, Michael Chen, Penny Rashin, Mike Mauro, Tom Turrentine and Nick Mitrakis, with Stuart Sawabini as a special advisor—noted that any construction project of this scale, “especially when dealing with a nearly 100 year old building, will certainly experience a few bumps in the road.”
“Having said that, we continue to be slightly ahead of schedule, and slightly under budget, “Walbert said. “That certainly would not be possible without the expertise of our town employees, specifically Joe Zagarenski, Tiger Mann, and the rest of his team. Joe, of course, was a professional construction manager before the town hired him. His expertise has been a huge benefit to the town and to the project. We have also been extremely pleased with our General Contractor, Turner Construction, they are pros up and down the organization. Our project manager, Scott Tompkins, runs a very tight construction site, and even more importantly, he has been very accessible to our very patient neighbors. It can’t be any fun to be next door to a project like this, yet they have all been extremely willing to work around the project, and help any way they can.”
Walbert added that the EMTs based next door at New Canaan Emergency Medical Services “have worked overtime to find logistical solutions so that public safety is not compromised during construction.”
“The Methodist Church, across the street, has generously allowed many of our workers to use their parking lot as well,” he said. “Finally, our Police Department has spent thousands of man hours planning and implementing their temporary move to 39 Locust Ave., and working with the project architect, Brian Humes, to help ensure that this building will serve New Canaan well for the next 50 years.”
Tomkins said that workers are now installing finishes such as vinyl flooring, carpeting and painting on the upper floor to prepare “for the wood trim that should be done by the middle of January.”
On the main level, the team is “just wrapping up getting enclosed with the exterior brick and the windows getting installed.”
“We’re going to start working on the taping and getting the ceiling grid in, getting prepared for painting by the end of the month,” he said. “And then on the lower level, the boiler room is in good shape. We’re hoping to start a boiler startup in the next couple of weeks, pending our receipt of the transformer that we need from Eversource. The training facility is really in good shape, ready to go. We’re using it as a staging area for lockers. Currently we are installing the lockers in both the men’s and women’s locker rooms. We’ll be done with those by the end of next week [Dec. 20], just before Christmastime, which will give us the opportunity to start putting ceilings in and start really buttoning things up from that aspect.”
The exterior brick work at the police station is finished and workers have started on the roof, he said. Hardscaping at the site most likely will come in the spring, Tomkins said, with earth-stabilization and workers putting down straw, hay and mulch “so we don’t get runoff.”
“And then come springtime we’ll be able to finish up, button up the last little bits and pieces of the work,” he said.