News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Cookeville’s Police Department presented early drawings of their new headquarters to City Council during Monday’s work session.
Chief Randy Evans says the department will continue discussing the plans and hopes to have a groundbreaking by August 2019.
“[The drawings] were about our tenth iteration of just trying to figure out how the building needed to flow, the adjacency, and the sizes,” Evans says. “As we go through our needs assessment, some of the things changed. We got away from lockers… and that space was utilized somewhere else as we got into it and looked at it in this format of what we really needed.”
Evans notes the locker room was abandoned because the department would’ve had to allocate for the number of male and female officers. He adds it’s unclear as to what the department’s needs would’ve been further into the future.
“We pretty much mirror our needs assessment as far as features of the building,” Evans says. “One room may be larger, one room may be smaller. The one thing that’s non-existent is again, those male and female locker rooms. We abandoned that concept, reallocated that space, and personally I feel this is a better concept.”
Evans says the building will feature indoor parking for officers with temporary kennels for K9 units if necessary. The main elevator also has a feature that allows officials to direct people on the second floor into secured or unsecured areas, such as staff offices or interrogation areas.
Current estimates have the project costing the city approximately $14 million, which City Manager Mike Davidson noted would not be a problem at this time. The building site is located just off of Neal Street.
