West Valley City • Police Chief Colleen Jacobs hesitated when asked about the differences between the city’s previous police stations and the new state-of-the-art $25 million headquarters that it opened on Tuesday.
“Let me try to positively spin this,” she said wincing from some unpleasant memories. “When I started with the police department, we were in the basement of City Hall.” City Manager Wayne Pyle says operations there “were coming out of the seams. It was a stop-gap operation.”
Next, Jacobs said police “moved into an office building that was never designed to be a police department,” and was already old, inadequate and still cramped. Also, “water would come in on you when we had rain and a stiff wind from the north,” Pyle added.
No more.
Now the police department for Utah’s second-largest city, with 135,000 residents, is moving into the gleaming building of its dreams. “It’s like Christmas came early,” Jacobs said.
The city cut the ribbon on the new 66,500-square-foot, three-story building Tuesday — and celebrated with precision maneuvers by motorcycle officers, a bagpipe band, plenty of speeches, public tours and food trucks for the crowds.
“This building is amazing. It’s new, it’s modern,” Jacobs said. “We needed this.”
Diane Shafter, a forensics investigator, could not stop smiling in the new, large forensics lab — where all the equipment is state-of-the-art. “Before, we had a 6-by-4 room. We breathed in all the chemicals there. I’ll probably die from lung cancer from it,” she said. “Now we have the best safety equipment possible. We are excited.”
Jacobs noted each of the many new evidence locker cages are larger than the old forensics lab. The new building even has areas to hold two cars for technicians to process for evidence.
It has new holding cells, interview rooms, evidence handling areas, work areas, offices and even a large community room.
Mayor Ron Bigelow said while the new building is important to help improve police operations, he says it may be even more important as a symbol for progress by the city.
“It is a symbol of what is happening in West Valley City. It is a symbol to the citizens …. about the status of the police department” and how it has become “a large professional organization,” he said.
Also, the mayor said it “is a symbol of the health and the direction of our city,” and development of the Fairbourne Station area around City Hall and the Valley Fair Mall as a new downtown for the suburban city.
A nine-story office tower next to it is set to be completed next year. A seven-story parking garage across the street — with parking for an adjacent TRAX station and offices — is set to open soon, helping Fairbourne Station take more shape.
“What a great thing it is for our city, and a great time to come together and celebrate,” the mayor said.
Jacobs added, “This will increase our efficiency and effectiveness beyond measure at this point.”
The police department officially starts moving in on Wednesday. Jacobs said it wanted to hold an open house and ribbon cutting first because it would be difficult to allow the public into secure areas later.
