John Tuohy

john.tuohy@indystar.com

In 1994, Fishers was a town of 10,000 people with a police force of 30 officers.

Today, it’s a city with nearly 90,000 residents served by 107 police officers.

Yet those officers still work out of the same space they did more than two decades ago — a cramped, two-story building at the municipal center on 116th Street.

To make room for the larger force, the city plans to build a three-story police station, along with a 240-car garage, in its Municipal Plaza. The estimated cost is up to $14 million. The buildings will be next to the current station, which will be refurbished and used for other city offices.

“We’ve just outgrown that old station,” said Fisher Council President John Weingardt. “Unlike the early 1990s, public safety is a big part of our community now.”

City officials said the police station cubicles are squeezed together, the crime lab and the patrol divisions are out of space, and the property room is too small to hold all the items it collects. The department already rents space for overflow at two locations for a cost of $36,000 a year.

The new 50,000-square-foot building will go at the location of the old Bureau of Motor Vehicles branch. That space is being used for other city functions, including the municipal courts, which will move to City Hall during construction.

The garage will be built next to the Nickel Plate railroad tracks.

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The city this week selected Hagerman Group, a Fishers construction company, as the favored project manager. Bids went out in September. Hagerman has entered a $510,000 “scoping” agreement, in which it will determine what work needs to be done, develop a design, construction drawings and budget.

Hagerman recently built the American Red Cross headquarters near Downtown Indianapolis, oversaw the renovation at Sycamore School in Indianapolis and was awarded the contract to build the $17 million Haven, a five-story hotel in Grand Park in Westfield.

The new police station will have 9,000 square feet for storage and evidence processing, an armory and a gym with lockers. Construction could be completed by the fall of 2017.

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at (317) 444-6418. Follow him on Twitter: @john_tuohy.

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