When city councilors voted in 2023 to buy the former Concord Group insurance building with its gleaming, geometric turquoise windows and surrounding two acres of land off North State Street, they were told it had a lot going for it.
It was centrally located in the city, with easy access to several main traffic arteries and already served by existing water and sewer infrastructure.
It was also clear that the city wanted to ensure a new life for the insurance building. Professional studies prior to the purchase stated that the property itself and the 1957 office building would be suitable for a new police headquarters. The budget laid out a “placeholder” figure – which city hall emphasized was just an estimate – at $27.5 million for the project, not counting the $4.1 million the council approved to acquire the property.
While the need for an addition of some kind was plain — the office space wasn’t exactly suited for its own sally port, as a resident pointed out during the hearing in 2023 — the pitch was that the 38,000 square foot building could be renovated to house the new police headquarters.
Today, plans call for a roughly 70,000 square-foot facility combining the existing Concord Insurance Group building with a 32,000 square-foot addition. City residents were told last week that the offices won’t be able to meet an international building code for essential facilities. As a result, about half of the department, square foot by square foot, can’t go in the building the city bought for that purpose.
At an information session on the project Wednesday night, project leaders with the city were joined by architects to take questions on the design.
The presentation underlined the shortcomings of the current police building: how the lack of a garage and storage space means there’s little room to properly store evidence or safely transport detainees through the building, how no locker room facilities exist for female officers, and how the lobby contains only a few square feet to welcome the public.
“Showing up to work there every day,” said Beth Fenstermacher, city special projects director, “is depressing.”
Where some residents felt out of the loop, though, was on exactly why the scale had changed so much.
As essential facilities, most parts of a police station must meet a high standard of international building code, explained Fenstermacher, members of Harriman architects, and Robert Manns, a partner with MW studios, a consulting firm that specializes in public safety facilities. They must be the “last building standing” or meet the international building code Category IV, for extreme scenarios like high wind, earthquake or blizzard.
The insurance building can’t be made to fit that code.
Desk operations, city offices and reception spaces will go into the renovated mid-century building, but much of the department’s operations can’t be housed there, far more than originally anticipated. That necessitated the larger-than-expected addition, the audience was told.
“Why has this been discovered?” asked Roy Schweiker, a lifelong city resident and frequent attendee at city meetings. “We paid someone to do a study of the existing building and see how much it needs to be added, and now we suddenly discover a whole bunch more needs to be added.”
The city had a period of “due diligence” after buying the property “to determine suitability thereof for a new Police Headquarters,” as stated in an April 2024 report. It examined both the land and the existing building.
The study called for a 19,500 square-foot addition to accommodate the department’s range of needs. The site itself was a rare find in the downtown area, Deputy City Manager Matt Walsh outlined to city councilors, even if the building needed a lot of updating.
At that time, one councilor expressed apprehension with the size of the addition, and was told by Concord’s police chief that the plan had some extra space built in, that there was room in this plan to grow.
The total cost estimate, including the purchase price and designs, came out to just under $45 million. Councilors, facing some sticker shock, were told the anticipated cost accounted for inflation.
“Prices could go up, a little,” City Manager Tom Aspell said in April 2024 when the sale closed. “We wouldn’t want to give you something where it comes in and we’re saying it’s $45 million and it turns out to be $65 million – or even $50 million.”
With the larger addition, the total project price tag would now fall just short of $49 million.
City and project leaders said this week that the need for this bigger footprint wasn’t forseen because the initial study didn’t evaluate whether the building met the disaster-level code. It wasn’t part of the scope of the feasibility study, they said.
The 2024 study did identify that the “existing building is not feasible to be Cat. IV,” the higher building code — but only in passing. The fact that a majority of the department’s functions wouldn’t be possible in the insurance building wasn’t clearly communicated to councilors before they voted to purchase the property.
A 2024 cost estimate on brand new construction came in right about where the price tag is now – but for a more compact space. So, in some ways, the city is getting a larger facility for about the same price as new construction.
“From a national perspective, you guys are getting an extremely good value for what is being delivered,” said Manns, the national consultant working on the design.
The 4 Bouton St. property and the insurance building have benefits. The building’s stone first-floor structure means it has some of the “transparent fortress” features – a sturdiness needed to protect public safety buildings against threats – built in. The extra space will create room for the city prosecutor’s office to move out of the space it currently rents. Buying the building and giving it new life means the city steps in to preserve a recently vacated space that has a historic architectural presence.
In an interview with the Monitor, City Manager Tom Aspell didn’t directly answer why the city didn’t more closely evaluate the insurance building for the required code before buying it.
“Would you do that for all the different sites that you look at?” he said.
“I don’t think you’re going to find a building anywhere in the city that is going to be code-compliant for a police station,” he continued, “I think what you’re asking is a hindsight question.”
Putting on an addition to make the building usable as a police headquarters, he concluded, is part of the cost of preserving it. The alternative, in his mind, is tearing it down.
Concord City Councilors will vote on whether to move forward with a new police station in November, one month after the public’s first chance to weigh in and ask questions about the project.
Given the amount of change to the plans, some at this week’s meeting were uncomfortable with the timeline. If approved quickly, construction would start in the spring, and officers could move in around the fall of 2027.
“I don’t think any of us question the need for a new building, but I am really surprised at the expediency in the timeline,” said attendee Ron Raynor. With one month between this first public meeting and the scheduled vote, he suggested the council should take more time and take more public input before signing off on the project.
City Councilors will get a presentation on the police station at their meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 14. The city’s homepage for the project can be found on its website. No additional public hearings are scheduled to be held on the project until their November meeting, when a vote on the new station and its more than $40 million construction cost will appear on the agenda.
Other items scheduled to be discussed Tuesday night will include a public comment period and information session on two questions set to appear on November city ballots: whether the city should open the door to social districts that serve alcohol outdoors and whether it should opt out of allowing Keno.