After years of planning Belleville police are getting a new station

Belleville city council has given the green light for a new police station on the corner of College and Sydney streets.

Mayor Taso Christopher says the existing building at the new site houses the municipality’s public works department.

“Now we’ll be having two end great results. We’ll have a police services facility and we’ll also have a public works campus.”

The current station is showing its age. It’s not accessible, and there are water leaks.

Space is already an issue for police at the existing station and Belleville Police Service chief Ron Gignac says they are set to hire more officers.

“Before the end of the year, we’ll have 92 sworn police officers here and 43 civilian members here.”

Technology will be updated in frontline cruisers. That update will be matched in the new station.

The construction work will be a combination of renovations and expanding the current building.

The mayor says the property is large enough for other expansions as the city grows.

“We’re looking at a facility that is nine-plus acre. We have 30,000 plus feet. We’re looking at adding an addition there.”

That would bring the total size of the new building to 65,000 square feet.

The total cost is expected to be around $21 million, plus another $2 million for information technology, communications, and furniture.

Planning for the new police station has taken almost a decade, but Christopher points out that has allowed the municipality to set aside money for the project.

“We’ll have approximately $7 million already that we’ve put into the police facility reserve, which is going to assist us financially, and then we’ll be having to look at the difference on long-term debt.”

The mayor says construction is expected to begin late winter or early spring.

“Hopefully we’ll be starting construction in 30 to 60 days and then we go hard from there.”

Police are expected to move into the new building in the spring of 2019.