Somerville to unveil emergency services complex plans on June 1
SOMERVILLE - The borough is getting closer to realizing its decades-long dream of having a new emergency services facility.
Plans for the new $31 million North Gaston Avenue facility, which will serve both the police and fire departments, will be presented at a special public meeting 7 p.m. June 1 in the County Commissioners Meeting Room on the third floor of the Somerset County Administration Building on Grove Street.
Borough officials are hopeful that construction could begin later this year. Construction could be completed by spring 2024.
“I can’t wait to break ground,” said Mayor Dennis Sullivan. “This was years in the making, and in the end our first responders will have a state-of-the-art home that will serve Somerville for the next 50 years. The good people of Somerville deserve no less than the best protection we can provide.”
The borough is finalizing details of the lease-purchase agreement with Stonewater LLC to build the facility that will house the police department and consolidate the borough's fire companies under one roof.
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“We are exploring a lease-purchase arrangement with Stonewater that will allow the project to be built quickly without adding long-term debt to our municipal budget," said Councilman Granville Brady.
Revenue from current and future Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreements with developers are projected to cover the annual costs of the complex so, Brady said, "there should not be any dramatic tax increases over the term of the lease."
At the end of the 40-year lease with Stonewater, the borough will assume ownership of the building,
But, as soon as construction is completed and the emergency services move in, the borough can sell its police headquarters and existing firehouses which could lead to more redevelopment and property tax revenue, Brady explained.
The borough council and other municipal committees normally meet in a cramped meeting room at police headquarters, a former brewery on South Bridge Street, but Avalon Bay, developer of the apartments in the transit village by the train station, has donated 4,000 square feet of space in the project to the borough for use as a community meeting space.
“This is the largest and most important public project that Somerville has undertaken since the high school was opened in 1970," Sullivan said. "I am proud to be a part of this administration that has shown such dedication and determination to get us to this point. The new complex is our legacy to future Somerville residents,”
The new building also will have space for the borough's Office of Emergency Management and an office for the Somerville Rescue Squad, though its vehicles will not be onsite.
Originals plans to include backup space for Somerset County's 911 center have been dropped. That decision shaved $8 million off the cost of the building. Elimination of a parking deck saved $800,000.
The borough bought the 1.77-acre property, the site of the former Gaston Avenue Bakery, on the west side of Gaston Avenue at Cliff Street for $1.4 million in 2018. The funds for the purchase came from a property tax settlement with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital a few blocks away.
Stonewater has developed or managed projects throughout the United States for the federal government and states. The firm developed an FBI field headquarters in Atlanta, a Coast Guard Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas and was the construction manager of the headquarters of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Stonewater has leased the headquarters of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to the federal government, among other projects.
Email: mdeak@mycentraljersey.com
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