Brewer’s $6.75 million public safety building taking shape

BREWER – Anyone who has walked into the public safety facility on South Main Street, which is shared by the city’s police and fire departments, has seen that the quarters are tight.

To solve the space problem, a new $6.75 million public safety building is under construction on Parkway South.

The walls to the new two-building facility are now framed, with officers and firefighters expected to move into their new home in October – or sooner – Police Chief Perry Antone said Monday.

Referring to how cramped the departments are now at the South Main Street building, Antone said 22 people were working out of just 2,200 square feet of space. Over the years, the deteriorating building, which was built in 1958, also has served as the municipal court and at one time had prisoner holding cells.

Local construction firm Nickerson & O’Day and WBRC Architects-Engineers of Bangor are the design-build team working on the new multilevel facility, which will be approximately 30,000 square feet and situated on 3 acres across from Liberty Drive and adjacent to Interstate 395.

The site provides good access to major roadways, which should make response times shorter, and it is located next to the high school and just down the street from the Brewer Community School, a new elementary-middle school that is scheduled to open in 2010.

The new public safety facility will actually be two connected buildings – one that looks like an old colonial home on the right side of the site, which will have shared space for the two departments; and a warehouse-style fire station on the left with living space for firefighters on the second level.

The framing of the first building was completed in the fall, but the firehouse portion recently was put up and the final braces were welded together on Monday, said Kevin Gresser, project manager for Nickerson & O’Day.

“We’re quite a ways into the structural phase, and about to begin exterior sheathing,” he said.

The three-story colonial structure has been completely enclosed in tarp to protect workers from the elements, which also has allowed them to pour cement for the flooring. A third level of flooring will be poured Wednesday.

“We’re also going to be starting, behind the tarp, some interior framing,” Gresser said. “That’s a few week out.”

The interior for the three-story building has separate space for each department, with some shared areas.

Once the facility is complete, both the police and fire departments will have significantly more space, Antone said.

“We’re looking at about 12,000-square feet” for the police department, he said. “It’s extremely exciting. It’s just going to help us be more efficient at what we do.”

For example, “there will be work stations to accommodate every officer that’s working at one time,” he said. Currently, officers have shared-use computers set up in one room which also is used as a conference room, interview room, storage area and lunch room.

The fire department and ambulance crews are now crammed into the space above the firetruck bays at the South Main Street facility.

The new structure is a design-build project, which allows flexibility because the builder works hand-in-hand with the designer to overcome and brainstorm on any project obstacles, said City Engineer Frank Higgins, who is the city’s project manager.

“There are areas here we’re still designing,” he said. “The nice part of [design-build] is it gets your building built a lot quicker. We really have to all pull in the same direction.”

However, piecing the facility together requires constant attention and communication.

“It’s a process that requires a lot of cooperation,” Higgins said. “They [the design-build team] really stepped up to make it work, and we’re really happy with how things have gone.”

U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development program has allocated a $6.5 million community facility direct loan for Brewer, which is a low-interest loan designated for the project.

“Everyone that I’ve spoken to is very excited about the building and acknowledge that it’s long overdue,” City Manager Steve Bost said.

Antone couldn’t agree more.

“Now that they’ve got both sides started, you can start to see the layout,” he said. “I think it’s going to be gorgeous. It’s exactly what we had hoped for.”