Additions to the UW-Madison Police Department building begin this fall. The renovations will more than double the current space the department has, an expansion UWPD spokesman Marc Lovicott said they have wanted for nearly five years.
“We’re basically out of space,” Lovicott said. “Right now we’re spread throughout three different buildings on campus. It’s hard to get collaborative work done when we’re not all face-to-face.”
UWPD occupies rooms in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps building as well as the School of Nursing. At their main station on Monroe Street many employees are required to share offices with one or two other people.
One piece of the project will enclose the squad car parking area, known as “squad row,” and create a garage for the vehicles. This structure will also have offices built above and behind it, allowing adequate office space for employees to be in the same building.
This garage space will be a secure area for UWPD to transfer individuals being taken into custody from a police vehicle to the building. Currently this transaction occurs just outside the backdoor of the facility with one guard keeping watch, but the addition will create a safe “sally port,” as Lovicott referred to it, and shorten that process.
“This will bring us into compliance with accreditation standards that are set that we haven’t been able to meet,” Lovicott said. “We are triply accredited by three different agencies. However, one of the standards that we consistently don’t meet is that secure sally port, just because of the way our building was built.”
Along with a new facade on the main entrance area of the building, UWPD will install a larger training space. This will be complete with new technology, which will also be updated throughout the building. According to Lovicott, these improvements are the first UWPD has made to its space since the building was built in 1990.
UWPD plans to break ground on the $4.8 million project in the near future; the department has met with the city’s Plan Commission and are only waiting on a signature of approval from Gov. Scott Walker, which they hope to receive within the next week.
“The goal is to have everything complete in about a year,” Lovicott said. “The running joke around here is, ‘Don’t worry, everything will be better in the new building.’ Now that that’s actually happening, folks are pretty excited.”
