Bainbridge Island Police Chief Matthew Hamner can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
And it looks a lot like a new two-story police station.
The Bainbridge Island City Council unanimously agreed this week to move forward with plans for a two-story public safety building that includes not only a new home for the city’s police department but also space for a municipal court.
The project will boast a police firing range on the property, as well. Officials said the firing range, which will be the first for any police agency in Kitsap County, will be built as a separate building to cut down on costs.
“I’m extremely grateful,” Hamner said of the council’s decision this week, which finally resolves the debate over whether the department will move from its substandard station on Winslow Way to more modern digs away from downtown.
“I don’t know how we can continue to do business in our 1945 fire station,” Hamner said of the department’s current facility.
At its meeting Tuesday, the Bainbridge Island City Council asked city staff to abandon the one-story option for a combined police station and municipal court and instead refine plans for a two-story building on NE New Brooklyn Road.
The council voted unanimously to move forward on the project, and officials said they will now focus on the acquisition of the property before more detailed design work gets underway later this year.
Public outreach efforts for the project are expected to come this fall.
The new public safety building is expected to cost approximately $28.4 million. That estimate does not include the cost of buying the property.
Council members reviewed preliminary drawings Tuesday for both the one- and two-story options, and officials were clearly in favor of a public safety center where the top floor would be entirely devoted to the city’s municipal court.
Much attention was given to the price tag of the project, which has more than doubled from estimates a few years ago.
According to a new report by the city’s consultants, costs have climbed approximately 149 percent since 2014, when the city estimated the cost at $10.1 million.
That earlier estimate was made the year before city officials turned to Bainbridge voters for money to pay for the project. A bond request for $15 million for a new police station, proposed for just north of city hall, was soundly rejected by voters, however, in November 2015.
Officials noted the earlier estimate did not include the level of detail found in the newest figures, and was not a straightforward apples-to-apples comparison.
Land improvement costs, for example, were not included in the earlier estimate, which also did not contemplate including the municipal court or a firing range.
The new facility is expected to be built on property just east of the Bainbridge Island Fire Department’s Station 21 helipad on NE New Brooklyn Road.
The city does not own the 1.89-acre site along NE New Brooklyn Road where the police station would be built, and the new estimates do not include the cost of land acquisition.
