PEABODY — The City Council will vote on a $69.2 million bond order for a new public safety building at a special meeting Tuesday night.
Introduced last year, the proposed facility would house the entire police department and fire department’s administrative offices at the site of a parking lot off Allens Lane, just behind today’s police station.
If approved, the project will centralize the city’s emergency management team on the same campus as the Higgins Middle School.
“It’s desperately needed for our city,” Mayor Ted Bettencourt told The Salem News Friday. “I’ve always said that to have a strong, vibrant city, I believe you need to have a strong school system and strong police and fire emergency services.”
Bettencourt will provide updates on the project at Tuesday’s Finance Committee meeting at 6:45 p.m. in City Hall’s Wiggin Auditorium. Residents can also Zoom into the meeting or watch it live on Peabody TV.
The council is expected to take a final vote on the bond order that night if it’s approved in committee. The approval is needed for the city to put out a bid in April for blasting work planned for this summer.
There won’t be as much blasting as during construction of the Higgins. This work should wrap up by the time school starts, Bettencourt said.
More site preparation work is scheduled for this fall. Construction won’t fully get underway until 2025, he said.
If all goes well, the facility should open in September 2026.
It’s unclear what will happen to the current fire administration building that’s next to the city’s main fire station on Lowell Street. No plans are final for the police station’s future either, but Bettencourt said it could be converted to city offices.
Both buildings are in decent shape for their age. The problem: there’s just not enough space for modern emergency management technology, gear or staff.
“When emergencies arise, to me it makes more sense that everybody’s together,” he said. “They’re doing training together, they’re in constant communication together, and I think that’s going to benefit the residents of our city for generations to come.”
The city had started planning for a new public safety building prior to 2020, but pushed off any plans once COVID-19 hit. Officials are working with the companies Tecton Architects, Construction Monitoring Services and W.T. Rich Co. to complete the project.
The proposed three-story building (with one of those floors below ground) will be twice as large as the current police station.
Preliminary plans for the building, first presented by the city in August, are largely the same, but the site will now have its own street access for emergency vehicles and more parking, Bettencourt said.
There are 158 public parking spaces and 95 for police between Higgins and the existing police station, located on the same campus. That will increase to 188 public spaces and 112 police spaces once the new public safety building is built — a 20% increase, Bettencourt said.
The new facility comes within a decade of the city building the new Higgins, and as its planning for a new Peabody Veterans Memorial High School. An improvement project is underway at Central Elementary School and another is wrapping up at Welch Elementary School.
There will be a tax effect as the city undertakes paying for these projects, but Bettencourt said it will be moderate.
“When I came in as mayor, I thought the city needed an incredible amount of infrastructure work,” he said. “Our bridges, roads, buildings and parks were just in a serious decline. … For our city to continue to be thriving, these investments are critical.”
To access the Zoom of Tuesday night’s meeting, visit https://www.peabody-ma.gov/.
Contact Caroline Enos at CEnos@northofboston.com.
