PEABODY — The City Council has approved a $69.2 million bond order for a new public safety building planned to go up on Allens Lane behind the existing police station.
Dozens of Peabody police officers and firefighters attended the council’s Finance Committee meeting at City Hall Tuesday night to support the move, which was adopted in a 10-1 vote of the council.
The facility will house the entire Police Department and the Fire Department’s administrative offices. It is planned to open in the fall of 2026.
“Given the crazy world we live in right now, we need to be better prepared and have our emergency services, I believe, centralized,” Mayor Ted Bettencourt said Tuesday night.
The project will move the fire chief and fire administration offices from a small building next to the city’s central fire station on Lowell Street to the same building as the police chief, on the Higgins Middle School’s campus.
Currently, the city’s emergency response team meets at the public services building on Farm Avenue.
Today’s police station is a sturdy building, but isn’t ADA-compliant, is hard to navigate, doesn’t have enough spaces for the public to speak to police officers privately, has a too-small Sally port, little storage space for evidence and a female locker room that’s reaching capacity, among other issues, police Chief Tom Griffin said Tuesday night.
The new building will address such issues and be equipped with better training facilities suited for de-escalation training. It will also support modern technology and “improve morale and job satisfaction,” he said.
“A well-designed facility can serve as a hub for community engagement and initiatives, fostering positive relationships between law enforcement and residents by fostering open communication and collaboration.”
Fire Chief Jay Dowling, Superintendent Josh Vadala, former District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett — a consultant on the project — and abutting neighbors supported the project Tuesday night.
The vote allows the city to put out a bid in April for blasting work planned for the summer, which should wrap up by the time school starts, Bettencourt said.
Construction on the three-story building (with one of those stories below ground) would start in 2025 and end in fall 2026. It will be twice as large as the existing police station.
The public safety building will have its own vehicle access from Allens Lane and another access point on Park Avenue, according to site plans.
Currently, there are 158 public parking spaces and 95 spaces for police between Higgins and the existing police station. That would increase to 188 public spaces and 112 police spaces once the new public safety building is built — a nearly 25% increase in public parking, despite the middle school losing a parking lot through the project, Bettencourt said.
Peabody residents are due to see a $30 to $75 property tax increase in the next year or two as a result of the project. At the project’s peak in a few years from now, residents could see a $170 tax increase, he said.
Bettencourt expects some debt from the Higgins Middle School reconstruction project to soon come off of the city’s debt service, reducing the effect of the new project on the fund.
“There’s never a good time to do a major capital project,” Bettencourt said. “It was never a good time to build a $92 million middle school, it’s never a good time to invest this type of money in really anything, but it fills a critical need.”
Councilor at-Large Anne Manning-Martin was the sole councilor who voted against the bond order.
She agreed the city needs a new public safety building, but said it should wait until after November when she expects the economy to improve. Allens Lane is also not the right location, she said.
“I went to a craft show at Higgins Middle School, and just to get out of it, it was like being stuck on Storrow Drive,” Manning-Martin said. “You’re all going to be in the thick of that every day, and I don’t want to do that to you. I think you deserve better.”
The city considered locations in Centennial Park, land owned by Rousselot, on Pulaski Street, Route 114 and Route 1, Bettencourt said.
There were environmental concerns at these properties or the sites just weren’t up for sale, he said. He likes that Allens Lane puts the building next to the middle school on land the city already owns, he added.
Ward 4 Councilor Julie Daigle lives in the area and represented the City Council on the project’s advisory committee.
“We have the police station in a similar location right now. The neighbors, the school, they’re used to the traffic, the shift changes the sirens,” she said.
“There is a sense of security with the middle school there, so I really like having it there. I think it’s appreciated having it central to the city.”
The future of the current police station isn’t final yet. Bettencourt said it’s likely to turn into administrative offices for the school district, which rents space across from City Hall now.
Ward 1 Councilor Craig Welton encouraged the city to turn it into a youth recreation space — an ideal use since it’s next to the middle school.
“There are a number of kids that don’t make it to the Y … if we use it as another storage building that sits there and doesn’t generate revenue for us or doesn’t generate a significant impact in the community, it would be an opportunity that we might not get back,” he said.
Contact Caroline Enos at CEnos@northofboston.com.
