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Date: 10/30/2023
SOUTHAMPTON — Police Chief Ian Illingsley remembers the bruising failure in 2016 of a proposal to build a new public safety building. That disappointment guides his thinking now when discussing a new project with the current Public Safety Building Committee.
“I’m looking at how we can present it to the public … as cost effective,” Illingsley said during a meeting last month of the committee. “We can get away with two sally ports. I don’t think we need three.”
A sally port is a secure entry to the station where detainees can be safely transferred to a processing area. The initial plans for the project included three sally ports. Eliminating a sally port, 16 by 35 feet, will save about 560 square feet and $1 million in charges.
The building may still cost more than $30 million. Illingsley knows voters will find that number tough to swallow. He and Fire Chief Richard Fasoli have gone through the initial plans and ideas submitted to the town by the designers on the project, HKT Architects, and are looking at every square foot to see if the departments can get away without it.
Initially, storage for the spare oxygen tanks used by ambulances was a small room of 10 by 10 feet. It was reduced by 20 square feet, then eliminated. Fasoli said the tanks could be chained to a wall. No separate room was required.
The chiefs are weighing future developments in their fields, an attempt to anticipate what working conditions will be like for fire and emergency medical personnel in the coming years. Illingsley said police officers are now being compensated for working out at the gym. He and Fasoli both sought to preserve a bunk room in the planning, though with a reduced footprint.
Fasoli commented his department is 150 calls ahead of last year’s volume. If the trend continues he foresees a need for two ambulance crews in town. Illingsley also commented that fire and police personnel have different bunking needs. Fire personnel need longer resting times while police, according to Illingsley’s research, are better served by short-term “restorative” sleep. The need for separate sleeping arrangements for male and female officers was also noted.
“It was 100 square feet for the bunk area,” Illingsley said. “If that will help, we can reduce that. I also suggest that perhaps the common space might be reduced as well.”
The common space, a training and meeting room, was laid out at 1,188 square feet. The chiefs discussed numbers of attendees at a typical training. Both departments usually train about 20 members at a time. The uses of a room for meetings by other interest groups in town was also considered.
“There are other community groups that use the hall,” said Christine Fowles, Selectboard representative to the committee, about the main meeting room in Town Hall. “Community chorus, scouts, mother’s clubs … it would be useful to have somewhere to meet.”
The town also does not have a heating and cooling center, Fowles noted, and that would be an advantage.
Committee members voted unanimously to reduce the training room to 900 square feet. They also voted to investigate buying land for the building from the same landowner that offered to donate acreage for the project.
HKT Architects supplied a criteria matrix to help the committee compare the advantages and disadvantages of possible locations. Three options out of seven are still under consideration. Committee members used the form to evaluate 0 College Hwy. —the current fire station that was built in the 1830s — 124 College Hwy. and 79 Clark St.
The greater benefits of the 124 College Hwy. location were so apparent to the architects they assumed it was the choice of the committee. The location includes 4.6 acres of donated land. The donated land is situated behind a number of commercial lots along Route 10.
The committee, in reviewing the site, figured out that purchasing one of the commercial lots, at the end of the row of lots, would allow the town to create a direct access driveway from the highway to the facility. Sharing a driveway with commercial traffic generated by businesses on the other lots would be much less suitable. The committee discussed curb cuts, the difficulty of securing an additional driveway opening along a highway.
During discussion, the advantages of the site were plain to committee members. Town Administrator Ed Gibson composed a motion to authorize the Selectboard to approach the landowners at 124 College Hwy. The motion directed the Selectboard to seek clarity on the conditions and requirements for the donation of the land. The motion also authorizes the Selectboard to enquire whether the landowners would be willing to sell a commercial lot to the town to make provisions for a driveway for the new public safety building.
The Public Safety Building Committee, having slimmed down the layout of the project by almost 1,500 feet, voted unanimously to investigate the purchase of a commercial building lot.