By CHRISTIAN MAITRE
Waltham Times Contributing Writer
Plans are in motion for a new public safety facility on Lexington Street.
New facilities for the Police, Fire and Consolidated Public Works (CPW) departments will be built on their current lots at 155 to 175 Lexington St.
Initial talks about a new police station started in 2018 when Mayor Jeannette McCarthy created a Police Headquarters Selection Committee. Recent progress was made after the city hired Tecton Architects to design the new buildings.
Over the past 18 months, police Chief Kevin O’Connell and fire Chief Andrew Mullin consulted with Tecton Architects to assess each department’s needs and create preliminary building plans for the new stations.
Both chiefs said the deteriorating conditions of their facilities and the lack of adequate parking are the main reasons they need new buildings.
“We need to double the size of our police station,” O’Connell told city officials during a summer 2024 presentation.
He said conditions at the current station, located at 155 Lexington St., were cramped. Detectives lacked spaces to review evidence. Female officers lacked designated spaces, including their own locker rooms. And the lot lacked enough parking for training events.
To address those deficits, the city is looking to build a new 70,000-square-feet police station at 175 Lexington St, where the Fire Department headquarters currently sits. Upgrades would include new training facilities, a community meeting space and 180 parking spaces.
With the increase in space, O’Conall said there’s potential for implementing more modern policing practices. For example, he said he believes spaces dedicated to virtual de-escalation training for officers and mental health could benefit the department.
Fire Department needs outlined
The Fire Department also faces deficits in its current location, Mullin said.
“The biggest challenge is the parking,” he told the Committee of the Whole at its Dec. 3 meeting.
He said a 43,000-square-feet facility with additional parking spots is needed to accommodate daily training, citizens and contractors seeking permits, and employee parking.
Mullin last week told the committee that additional parking spaces would allow the station to host the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy, a free training course for fire stations provided by the state.
The current public safety building plans call for temporarily relocating the Fire Department headquarters to the former Elk Lodge property at the corner of Lexington and School Street during the construction of the new police building. The Fire Department’s final location will be determined after the police station is built.
More concrete plans follow needs assessments
According to Crystal Philpott, the city’s purchasing agent, these recently held needs assessments are a part of the initial programming or pre-design phase with Tecton.
Based on findings from that initial phase, Tecton will present an evaluation to the City Council that will then lead to the development of more concrete layout schematics for the space.
However, Philpott said Tecton has run into some roadblocks.
During a presentation to last week’s Committee of the Whole, she explained that Tecton was struggling to find ways to add additional parking spaces into the plan.
Multiple committee members offered ideas of having police and fire employees park off-site. Councilor-at-Large Kathleen McMenimen asked the city to research if parking lots on Athletic Field Road could be used for parking, while Councilor-at-large Randall LeBlanc suggested looking at 25 Summer Ave., which went up for sale recently.
Both the fire and police chiefs responded, explaining that off-site parking could be used for training or events but upgrades to on-site parking remain a priority.
Other details of the project remain to be determined. In an email to The Times, Philpott said issues such as funding, a timeline for construction and completion, and plans for the old buildings will be addressed after Tecton presents its evaluation.
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