Contract for three-floor facility expected to be awarded in fall
CAPE MAY — The city could break ground in October on its highly anticipated police station.
City Manager Paul Dietrich said it has been a long and arduous journey to reach this point. During the meeting July 1, City Council reviewed the final site plans, as presented by the project architects Rob Conley and John Descano of Robbie Conley Architect.
Council approved soliciting bids for the construction, which Dietrich said are due back Sept. 10. The contract may be awarded Sept. 16.
The police station will be located at the corner of Lafayette and St. Johns streets, in a former part of Lafayette Street Park.
“The plan and layout have remained pretty similar,” Dietrich said. “It accommodates all of the different site features and issues we’ve come up with, as far as grading and the remediation we have to stay away from at the former Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) remediation site.”
The plan presented includes electrified gas lamps, similar to those on the Washington Street Mall, fencing around the parking lot and landscaping.
Conley said the building would be constructed with the same colored brick masonry, windows and doors as the new firehouse, a project he also worked on for the city.
The design features three floors. The first floor will feature a public-facing lobby, a processing area and a designated space for the officers. There is also storage for police golf carts and bicycles for summer officers.
The second floor will house detectives, lockers and showers, a fitness area, break room and a kitchen for staff to prepare and eat meals.
The third floor is for the command staff and will include an open patio area and an observation deck. Conley said the area will overlook Lafayette Street Park and serve as a community gathering space.
Police Chief Dekon Fashaw was pleased with the design.
“The outside is fitting the surroundings of Cape May City,” Fashaw said. “The Historic Preservation Commission worked very closely with us on this project.”
Fashaw said some people have said the building would be too big, but noted the architects managed to pack everything they could within three floors.
The CMPD is currently divided between two buildings, with one operating out of City Hall and the other at the substation in West Cape May.
“I’d like to have my family together, and this brings everyone together,” Fashaw said.
He added that having a private space to bring people off the street was an important addition to the first floor. Because the current police station is housed in City Hall, doing so can be disruptive to other meetings taking place in the building, Fashaw said.
“We were allowed to make a room off the lobby so we could bring someone in, and discuss their issue or problem privately, and bring them out and sit in the lobby while we tend to their business,” Fashaw added.
The second floor will include an armory and an evidence collection processing area, which Fashaw said will enable officers to bag and tag evidence properly.
“It’s a very narrow building but everything we need is packed into this building,” he said.
Mayor Zack Mullock said he wanted to remind the public that the project included input from the Environmental Protection Agency, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office and the Cape May Historic Preservation Commission.
“It of course involved the school board, the county, the housing authority, Housing and Urban Development,” Mullock said. “It had every acronym you could come up with to work through each detail.”
The city’s land diversion was also a key piece in the process for the new station. The city traded 0.137 acres at the Sewell Tract in Green Acres to provide for a new police facility.
“As an aside from the police station itself, it preserved a ton of valuable and environmentally sensitive property at the Sewell Tract, to have a [police station] location that really worked for Cape May,” Mullock said.
