As village hall staff prepare to go before the Oak Park village board Nov. 20 with recommendations on how to proceed with planning and construction of a new police facility, Wednesday Journal took a look back to the last time the village sought to assess its needs and start the planning process.
An informal review was conducted of how several municipalities in the greater Chicagoland area have gone about their planning for new police facilities. As part of that, we spoke to several current or former officials about their experiences.
Oak Park officials have been discussing how to address numerous problems with both the village hall in general and the police department specifically since at least 2015, when they retained Wisps, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. to conduct a Property Condition Assessment of the 76,000 square foot village hall.
In November 2018 then-Village Manager Cara Pavlicek submitted a proposed resolution to hire FGM Architects for a Space Needs Assessment of the police department, at a cost of $53,680.
Pavlicek said FGM was chosen “for their ability to perform the scope of required services, their qualifications, experience and relevant knowledge…”
“A comprehensive, thorough process is required so that a credible projection of space needs for current and future uses can be identified,” she wrote.
That 2018 resolution noted that “When (the) Village Hall was originally conceived, village officials contemplated that the area on the extreme south end of the site could be used as a future building site to house various community agencies or units of local government.”
The village’s Space Assessment Team that worked with FGM included Pavlicek and three senior village hall staff, and six top ranking police staff, including then-Commander Shatonya Johnson, who is now Oak Park’s police chief.
FGM’s detailed 129-page report was blunt. The executive summary called the physical environment in the police department “dysfunctional,” finding the existing facility is “missing many functional areas common to modern police stations.”
“It is unfortunate how the police department has had to adapt their procedures to work around building deficiencies, including safety and security issues,” the FGM report stated. “Our analysis finds that 78,112 sq. ft. of space is necessary for the Oak Park Police Department to operate effectively. The existing police station is only 35,688 sq.ft.”
“(I)t became clear that the existing building is working against the police department,” FGM found. “Not only is the building too small, but the design of the building is negatively affecting the police department’s operations.”
“It is not possible to make the existing police station efficient and effective without providing the police department additional space,” FGM concluded.
Among the deficient areas FGM found were with detainee processing and lock up, evidence processing, the station’s “sally port” vehicle entry and prisoner transfer environment, evidence storage, records work areas, the investigations work areas, the firing range, and locker rooms.”
In addition, Oak Park has no training area for mandated state and federal officer training throughout the year.
FGM’s report outlined four possible approaches to the police station, emphasizing that only two would meet the department’s needs going forward.
- Renovate the police department’s 35,000 square foot basement and build an addition on the village hall for additional police space.
- Build a new police station somewhere else in the village.
- Renovate the existing basement areas in the police department.
- Keep the existing building as is.
“Once the space needs are approved and the village is ready to move forward, FGM Architects is prepared to assist the Village of Oak Park with the next steps,” the space needs assessment draft stated.
In February 2020, the village board approved an agreement with FGM. The contract would have paid $322,600 for schematic design, and an additional $428,800 for design development, $750,400 for construction documents and $107,200 for bidding, a total of $1,609,000 if all phases were approved.
Pavlicek estimated at the time that the work “from board direction to bidding will take an estimated 9 months.” Subsequently, subject to the scope of the project authorized, she said, “the construction could take 18-24 months.”
However, less than a month later, the project was paused due to the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
In 2022, consulting firm BerryDunn submitted a report on the police department that reaffirmed the necessity for a new station. As the Journal reported, “FGM was re-engaged to update the space needs assessment, finding that the village could benefit from a completely new, redesigned village hall and police department.”
FGM’s space needs assessment, village officials noted in July 2023, “could be the beginning of a move toward building a new station.”
One option FGM presented involved building an addition to the current police station and renovating the basement for police training functions, at an approximate cost of $75.4 million to $77.8 million.
Building a police station elsewhere would cost an estimated $66.9 million and $69.5 million, not including the purchase of at least two acres of land.
In 2024 the potential tear down of village hall was suggested, with an estimated price tag of $118 million to $124 million. That was met with both massive sticker shock and broad resistance to tearing down a historically significant building.
On Nov. 21, 2024, Oak Park hired a new architect — Johnson Lasky Kindelin —
to oversee the remainder of the village hall and police station project. JLK specializes in projects that involve historic preservation, with their hiring suggesting that village leaders were moving towards renovating the village hall building rather than rebuilding it.
Village President Vicki Scaman addressed hiring the new architect at an Oak Park candidate’s forum hosted by Wednesday Journal ahead of this year’s municipal election.
“We hired an architect that we truly believe is sincerely working with us and listening to the fact that we need a lower number,” Scaman said. “All you’ve been hearing from the board table is that we’re still looking for a lower number.”
Best practices from other towns
Several key issues uniformly came up when discussing the challenges of building a modern police facility, both in interviews with law enforcement experts outside of Oak Park and in reviewing the available literature.
They include conducting a thorough space needs assessment, gathering input from the officers who will work in the facility to understand their requirements, gathering input from residents regarding appearance and impact on neighbors, determining the municipality’s financial resources and planning for future needs not currently known or evident.
What also became clear is that any planning should be public and transparent as deliberations take place.
Wednesday Journal looked at the general characteristics of six police facilities in the greater Chicagoland area that are either being planned or are in the process of being built; Lake Forest, Wilmette, Libertyville, Lombard, St. Charles and Elmhurst.
The Lake Forest police station is being relocated to a large commercial building being repurposed. The St. Charles station is being renovated. Both projects will cost around $24 million.
The other four police stations involve new construction costing between $40 million and $50.5 million. The Elmhurst facility square footage is as yet undetermined, while the other five will be between 47,000 square feet and 58,000 square feet.
With the exception of the Elmhurst police station, which is just 35 years old, the five other facilities are between 55 years and roughly 100 years old.
Like Oak Park, the City of Lake Forest did a space needs analysis to begin its process. The results echo much of what Oak Park officials have found.
Lake Forest Police Chief John Burke spoke with Wednesday Journal about the process he and other officials in the City of Lake Forest undertook planning for their new facility.
He said input from all stakeholders was a priority, saying, “It’s been a partnership” with experts from public works, and people with various expertise, as well as the public. Burke said he and other police leadership met formally with planners on three occasions: at the start, midway through the process, and at the end when decisions were being finalized.
“There was input from almost every officer that works here,” he said. “We had input from residents from day one, from the budget to the look of the building.”
Burke and his two deputy chiefs visited numerous police departments in the region that had had new stations constructed in the past five years. “We looked at workflow, asked what they liked, what they’d do differently,” he said.
Asked what the number one concern expressed, Burke replied, “A large training area.”
“Our training space is very limited, around 12 to 14 people,” Burke said. The new space will hold around 80. The additional space isn’t just a matter of convenience, he noted. “We can’t host police training (seminars). We’re always sending our officers to other municipalities for training sessions.”
The FGM Needs Assessment noted that Oak Park has no training area whatsoever. It determined a required 1,500 square feet (50 by 30) for “Community meeting/Training,” space, as well as another 1,400 square feet for such purposes as chair and table storage, training supplies, a kitchenette, conference room, and communications and audiovisual equipment.
Not having adequate space for officer training on site forces departments to spend time and resources sending officers to trainings that are frequently long distances from home.
“We’re sending our officers (as far away as) McHenry and Naperville,” Burke said. “There’ a lot of convenience in not sending officers to other places and doing (training) on your own schedule.”
An added benefit in hosting trainings is the ability to assure a seat or two at the training.
“We’ll have the ability to place people first and have at least two officers in a training.”
Training, he said, isn’t a choice for police departments; many are mandated by the state. “CIT, Crisis Intervention Training, is mandated training,” said Burke. “We’re sending our officers to McHenry. Our building is just too small.”
Handling detainees safely and efficiently is also a challenge in a 60-year-old facility, Burke said. “We have installed metal tables with sharp, pointed corners. It’s not up to modern design standards.”
Modern police tasks and activities like investigations and evidence processing and storage require far more space than in the past. Lake Forest’s new facility, Burke said, “will give officers the ability to spread out.”
“The evidence area is three times the size of the old space.” With modern evidence procedures, he said, “you have to hold evidence forever.”
Having a well-designed work environment, with adequate space and natural lighting along with such amenities as officer health areas and adequate locker room space also enhances recruitment efforts.
“It goes a long way toward recruitment and retention,” Burke said.
Another goal Lake Forest had was accreditation by various law enforcement standard agencies.
One piece of advice they got back from other police departments: you can never have enough storage space.
“There was one resounding piece of advice: If you think you have enough storage space in your build, keep adding it. You’ll need it,” Burke said.
Burke also values the large indoor parking capacity for police vehicles. Beyond basic security, housing police vehicles inside protects expensive assets.
FGM’s needs assessment for Oak Park noted that “Having at least a portion of the vehicles in secure parking is a best practice.”
Burke concurred, saying, “It’s very (useful) in terms of wear and tear. There’s a lot of electronics in those vehicles. Parking them in a climate-controlled environment, out of the elements, he said, adds to their longevity.
It is worth noting that, while no details have been released, it appears Oak Park may be moving in the direction of a combination of FGM’s options 1 and 2. Option 1 would renovate the basement areas in village hall and build a police station addition on the existing village hall site, resulting in “the most functional police station.”
In a hybrid, rather than an addition attached to village hall, there would be a separate police station built to the immediate south of village hall (as shown in the attached rendering) with basement space in the former police department utilized for training areas and possibly a new gun range, one up to modern police training standards. “This option assumes that 16,382 sq. ft. of the existing police station will be renovated and a 64,111 sq.ft. addition will be constructed on the existing site to meet the space needs requirements of the police department,” FGM wrote. “
That solution would “take advantage of existing space and renovate it to correct accessibility, safety and security concerns, heating and cooling issues, and other items. By taking advantage of the existing space, the size of the addition can be reduced, which will reduce both land requirements and costs.”
Brendan Heffernan contributed to this report.
