CAPE MAY — City Council unanimously approved an $8.6 million contract with Ogren Construction of Vineland to build a new police station at Lafayette and St. Johns streets.
“It’s an expensive endeavor to have the taxpayers pay for a building such as this,” Mayor Zach Mullock said at the Tuesday council meeting. “This is such an important building for the future of the city.”
Police currently use a portion of City Hall on Washington Street and have a substation in West Cape May, which the department also covers.
For years, city officials have said the building was poorly suited for its use.
Mullock said at the meeting that Police Chief Dekon Fashaw’s office had been the principal’s office when the building served as Cape May High School.
Work is set to begin before the end of the year.
A previous administration had sought to build a combined public safety building on Franklin Street, taking in the fire department headquarters, also in poor shape, and the police.
As a council member, Mullock opposed that project as too expensive and too large for the site. Instead, the city built a new fire headquarters where the former HQ stood, the option Cape May voters supported in a 2020 ballot question.
Cape May City Council on Tuesday received the final plans for a large-scale new police building on Lafayette Street, with an estimated total cost of $7 million. Work could start in October.
At the council meeting, Fashaw indicated the police were disappointed in the result of the referendum.
“We’re not crybabies,” he said, stating that his officers moved on and made the situation work. “Our brothers over there at the firehouse got their place.”
Fashaw said he has met with neighbors of the new site, which will be placed where the Cape May dog park had been. He said the construction will be noisy and disruptive for a while.
“It’s going to be an impact to their daily,” Fashaw said. “We want to be good neighbors.”
He and Mullock thanked the members of an advisory committee that helped plan the new police department. Fashaw also praised the members of council and the city administration, along with the city taxpayers who will fund the project.
“Give us 24 months and I think we’re going to be where we need to be,” Fashaw said.
In comments to council, Fashaw cited the work of his command staff and the patrol officers both on the design of the building and for working under difficult conditions until construction is completed.
“We have a lot of work still to do,” Fashaw said.
A local group will redesign a proposal memorializing the sinking of a Navy destroyer in 1942. Some neighbors balked at being reminded of the horrors of war on the way to the beach.
A member of the citizen task force working on the building, former Mayor Bob Elwell, had wanted two-way mirrors in the interrogation room, often seen in police procedurals on television and in films. Fashaw said the building will not include that, and that police rely on video cameras instead.
The city has worked with the Historic Preservation Commission on the design. Along with the Lafayette Street Park, also undergoing a significant project, the site underwent a lengthy environmental cleanup from contamination related to the creation of gas for the city’s gas lights from coal.
The power company JCP&L undertook the remediation and will be involved in the construction process to monitor for contamination, officials said.
As planned, the police building will include a tower and other details aimed at fitting in with Cape May’s historic feel. At a previous meeting last summer, architect Rob Conley described a masonry building with a brick exterior, modeled to match the fire headquarters completed in 2023 around the corner on Franklin Street.
Conley worked on that design as well.
Conley described areas for patrol officers, detectives, rooms for meetings, workouts and public areas.
Ogren was the lowest of five bidders on the project, with the highest bid coming in at over $1 million more, at $9.78 million.
The city needed state clearance to use the property, which included a portion of protected land under the state Green Acres program. Earlier this year, the city approved a deal to swap a much larger portion of land in east Cape May, which will now have state preservation protection.
With classes back in session, students, teachers and staff in three Cape May County school districts are getting to know new superintendents.
Mullock thanked Cape May’s police officers for their patience with the process.
“You deserve the best of the best, and this building really will be,” Mullock said.
Contact Bill Barlow:
609-272-7290
bbarlow@pressofac.com
X @jerseynews_bill
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