At the Chapel Hill Town Council meeting September 13, members discussed moving the police department out of its current building and leasing a new one after continuous and inconvenient maintenance issues.
The Chapel Hill Police Department has been residing at 828 Martin Luther King Boulevard and has been waiting for renovations. The building’s condition has been less-than-ideal for Police Chief Celisa Lehew and the rest of the department. She stood before the council pleading for the department to lease a new building for her staff.
“Our ask tonight is that the town council support the town manager proceeding with leasing space for the police department while the staff continues working with the state’s Brownfields program at 828 Martin Luther King Blvd,” Lehew said. “Our guardians will always lead with our town values of respect but we are compromising the value of safety by remaining in this building. These are our guardians and it is affecting us.”
After her request, Lehew informed the town council of all the maintenance issues the department has faced while residing in the building. She listed specific examples of how the faulty building is compromising the mission of the department.
“On Monday a member of our professional staff arrived to work to find her computer destroyed from a water leak,” Lehew recounted. “Her office is on the first floor. Our generator failed during the last weather event, compromising our record system. Late last week I pulled a uniform out of my locker to find it full of mildew.”
The building is 41 years old and in dire need of a new roof, which the police chief said is an estimated $450,000 repair. Additionally, the 23,000 square foot space is not adequate anymore to comfortably fit the department. Lehew said that maintenance inconveniences have taken a toll on the department and her staff, though they continue to do their jobs diligently.
“Our team continues to carry out the mission of community safety despite the following conditions: plastic covers over our servers to protect from the leaking sealing, a ceiling where water pours directly into our lab, mildew on our walls, a bucket that permanently stays on the captains desk to capture leaks, stained carpets from toilets that are overflowing repeatedly, and a metal plate on the floor to cover when it’s rotted out,” Lehew explained. “On a good day we have hot water. On a bad day we continue to trip breakers from plugging in equipment.”
Lehew offered the town council the option to lease the Parkline Building at 1830 Fordham Blvd. Deputy Town Manager Mary Jane Nirdlinger shared more details to the proposal.
“There are limited options that have the space, and the parking, and the access that meet the department’s needs,” she explained. “Parkline meets the needs, as the chief has said, and the cost has aligned with or is less than some of the other options in town. Leasing makes financial sense now because it gets our police into a good space within about a year instead of waiting several years for construction and it frees up the debt fund for other projects for the seven- to ten-year duration of a lease.”
The goal of the building redevelopment is to make it into a Municipal Services Center which would include the police and fire departments, EMS, and parks and recreation. The decision for redevelopment began a decade ago when the town found coal ash at the building’s site, which has made its future more complicated. Chapel Hill decided to apply for the state-run Brownfield program in 2022 — although the town’s initial concept plan for the site was largely tabled due to construction costs and after community members voiced concern about long-term remediation for the coal ash.
Since construction costs remain high, Nirdlinger said leasing the police department away from 828 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will give the town more flexibility to determine the future of the site and to do the remediation recommended by the Brownfield program. She said once the Department of Environmental Quality publishes its draft agreement with the town, there will be a 30-day public comment period and a public hearing.
The Parkline property is at 1830 Fordham Boulevard, close to the county line and Interstate 40. (Photo via The Parkline.)
“We’ll still be able to go ahead and proceed with the Brownfield agreement with the state and do whatever remediation we need to do for the current conditions,” Nirdlinger added. “We can use that time to think about interim uses, long-term uses within the confines of that Brownfield.”
The town council asked questions about the proposal and unanimously approved the measure.
“We have to move,” Council Member Camille Berry said before the vote. “You have to move. And I’m amazed at how long you have held off at putting this before us.”
Photo via the Town of Chapel Hill.
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