The head of the appointed body that oversees the New Canaan Police Department said at the group’s most recent meeting that its members are eager to move forward with a building project at the current police station site.
The Police Commission is aware of significant deficiencies in the current building as-is and “we’re not seeing any other location that makes sense to us, where it should be,” according to Chair Paul Foley said.
“And I think there would be a lot of dissent in town to move it onto another location—into the woods or onto a field at Saxe—and the neighbors would like to see it stay where it is, as well,” Foley said during the Commission’s Feb. 16 meeting, held at police headquarters and via videoconference. “And as we suggested in our memo to the town bodies, we would like to keep it in place and then get a deeper dive, a further study, as to either renovate the current building or to tear it down and build a new structure. And go through a real cost-benefit analysis on those two ideas, instead of still looking for another site. So, we’re just trying to advance the ball on this, as we can. I’ve been involved in this for at least three years, I’ve been on the building committee for at least a year, since last March, so almost a year.”
Foley added that “This is not a passing look at the situation.”
“We’ve been involved with this, and I personally have been involved with this for a number of years,” he said. “So we hope that it gets advanced soon.”
The comments came during a general update on the New Canaan Police Department building project. Foley’s mention of the amount of time he’s spent on the project may have been a reference to comments made the prior week by First Selectman Kevin Moynihan. During a Board of Selectmen meeting, Moynihan while referring to a memo from the Police Commission regarding the future of the police station said he was “amused.”
“They [Police Commission members] have invested like six hours into it and I’ve invested hundreds of hours over the last year,” Moynihan said during the Feb. 8 selectmen meeting.
Multiple town bodies in New Canaan, as well as residents, have voiced opposition to proposals aired by Moynihan to relocate the police station to a baseball field at Saxe Middle School or to the woods that separate New Canaan High School from Saxe, while selling off the current station to a developer.
Moynihan during a Feb. 16 update to New Canaan’s legislative body said that he also recently looked into a building in the downtown as a possible future NCPD location but dismissed the idea because a project there would have been too expensive.
Moynihan said during that Town Council meeting that he also was “beginning a deeper dive into the envelope of the current building” and that the Board of Finance would take up the matter in March.
In response, Town Councilman Tom Butterworth noted that the legislative body in November had “voted unanimously to keep the Police Department in its current location.”
“And it was based on, at least for me, a question of avoiding two risks,” Butterworth said. “One the risk of public rejection of a new location and the other the risk of getting bogged down and getting the public to approve a new building at the current location. So I’m just wondering if we plan to change our minds?”
Moynihan responded that he didn’t think it was a “a good idea to renovate a 96-year-old building.”
“That’s why we are doing a deeper dive on the envelope, and we also have a significant issue with the pistol range being there,” he said. “But that’s for March.”
The Board of Finance is scheduled to take its final vote on the budget on Tuesday, though it has no other meeting scheduled this month, according to the municipal calendar online. The Police Department Building Committee is scheduled to meet March 10. The Town Council is scheduled to meet March 16, 22 and 24, with a final budget vote April 5.
Moynihan said the Police Department project hasn’t moved forward as quickly as it might otherwise have done in recent months due to a drawn-out process for acquiring an Elm Street building (for a future headquarters for the Board of Education) and the budget.
Town officials have discussed the need to renovate the 1927-built Police Department on South Avenue—originally built as the first New Canaan High School—for many years. The cost originally was pegged at $5 million, then $7 million, then $10 million and, more recently, in the $14.7 million to $18 million range.
In September, a team assembled by Moynihan unveiled a proposal to build a new police station on the Saxe ball field—an idea that Moynihan first shared during a press briefing in January 2019 (audio here). The idea originated with a former Police Commission chair, Moynihan said. One year ago, Moynihan spoke in favor of building a new police station somewhere else in town. The idea of building a police station at Saxe drew swift criticism in the form of an online petition that’s garnered 978 signatures, and town officials for months have questioned both the financial and political viability of such a project.
Moynihan said in November that he favored building a new police station in the woods that separate New Canaan High School from Saxe Middle School—a wooded area of trails connected to Waveny that runs south from the corner of Farm Road and South Avenue.
During the Police Commission’s Feb. 16 meeting, Chief Leon Krolikowski said the department “would like to get that project moving forward sooner rather than later.”
“There’s a sense of urgency to it, certainly,” Krolikowski said. “And I appreciate everybody’s work towards it.”