Board of Finance
Proposal for New Police Station on Saxe Baseball Field Unveiled
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A team assembled by First Selectman Kevin Moynihan on Wednesday night unveiled a proposed new $23.5 million police station that would be built on a Saxe Middle School baseball diamond. The two-story, approximately 24,000- to 25,000-square-foot glass-and-brick exterior building would sit on 3.6 acres running east off of South Avenue, along a line of trees that separates the school property from the New Canaan Y (see videos embedded above and below), according to a presentation from a New Britain-based architectural firm.
The new station would also include an underground level with a shooting range, and 89 parking spots would be spaced across about 36,000-square-feet around the building, according to Eric Rossi and Chuck Boos, a specialist and founding principal, respectively, at Kaestle Boos Associates, Inc.
The Saxe ballfield was one of about a dozen potential sites that the firm’s representatives, Moynihan, New Canaan Department of Public Works officials and a former Police Commission chair have been studying out of the public eye for months and it’s “the site that’s risen to the top of the heap,” Rossi said. “This site is fairly flat,” he told members of members of the Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance and Town Council gathered at Town Hall and via videoconference for a special meeting.
“It’s an existing [baseball] field, 60-foot baseline [baseball] field. Using the site allows us to get all the redundancies and all the site and mechanical systems that we need to get into police station in an easy way. The generator can go on-grade.