COURTESY OF THE SANDWICH POLICE DEPARTMENT
A rendering of the proposed police and fire facility at Quaker Meeting House Road and Cotuit Road.
SANDWICH – Sandwich Selectmen were given an update on plans to build a new police station and fire substation at their meeting on Thursday night.
The new 13,000 square foot facility will be located at the intersection of Quaker Meeting House and Cotuit Roads.
Plans also include an upgrade to the Route 6A fire headquarters and the Forestdale fire station to be moved to the new substation.
Residents approved a $17 million debt exclusion to fund the project last year.
“I am so excited to see this finally happening,” said Selectman Susan James. “I was on the building group when it started and I’m just very excited about this.”
The new location will include features like a state-of-the-art emergency operations center and separate locker rooms for male and female officers and firefighters.
The current police station was built in the early 1970s when the department had 9 employees. Currently, the department has 61 total employees, including 45 full-time.
The current building has flooding issues which affects the town’s EMS and fire and police communications equipment are located.
Designers also looked at the budget for the project and found available funds to add office space to the fire substation.
“Looking at our constraints on the site, we started to say that we could probably get some offices in here,” said Project Manager Taylor MacDonald. “We wanted to look at what the cost of that was going to be but also planning for the future makes sense to do the work now.”
Drawings of the facility will be available on May 3, with bids on the project accepted until June 7 and a contract awarded afterwards.
Construction is expected to take around 18 months with a completion date in December 2018 or January 2019.
By JUSTIN SAUNDERS, CapeCod.com Newscenter
