New police station location up for debate

By Josh Linehan

The Brookings Beacon

BROOKINGS — The decision about where to place a proposed new police station in Brookings needs a more thorough public debate, city councilors have decided.

That’s because the location itself is important, sure, but also because the process and ultimate choice features plenty of moving parts that will ripple out throughout the city for generations to come. According to city and state statistics, Brookings is growing at a steady pace and seems slated to do so for the foreseeable future.

With the city, schools and neighborhoods all directly involved, as well as the football and baseball programs in town, the Council held two public meetings about the original proposed site on the southwest corner of Fifth and Medary, nestled between the elementary school and Brookings High School. After feedback from the public at those gatherings, the Council is now going back through other proposed sites — and asking the public to get more involved in the decision.

The Council now plans on revisiting some of the other top sites at a study session on Jan. 20, and wants to hear from residents on this issue.

Out of land
This decision isn’t just about where to put a new police station. With Brookings basically bereft of developable land with any kind of centralized location, it’s the kind of conundrum apt to repeat itself in the years and decades moving forward.

Put simply: future public works projects are likely to require the same kind of horse trading that would be needed to make a new police station at Fifth and Medary happen.

“Most people who have sort of been paying attention in the last decade in Brookings know that we will run out of developable land. If we’re not already,” Deputy Mayor Nick Wendell said. “I think most people understand and appreciate that, but at the same time, I know they’re thinking, ‘There’s got to be another place, right? There’s got to be another location that could be viable.’”

Wendell continued: “A public facility can serve as a catalyst for development in an area that needs additional investment. I think there are other places in the community that would benefit from having this department facility built. Then it’s contagious around it, and other people think, ‘Let’s spruce up this property, or we could develop next door.’ I think that would have been one of the benefits of building it at Fifth and Medary. I think the same could be true in other parts of your community.”

The backstory
City leaders have been working toward a new police station for years and have been in serious discussions since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The cost to retrofit at the existing location was deemed prohibitive — though as construction costs have continued to rise, those numbers may be worth running again.
Officials also desired a somewhat centralized location, something the current police station downtown once offered, but arguably does not anymore. This is key to organizing patrols and keeping response times steady even as the city grows.

“It’s no longer centrally located when you think about our residential neighborhoods, and perhaps that real estate could serve a greater purpose adjacent to downtown than it is today. There’s a way that it could be a more commercially desirable block, and there might be a more suitable location for the police department,” Wendell said.

“And so that started us off on this path. So let’s start making a list of viable locations, whether those are in places the city already owns or if we’ve got a good partner out there that might sell us land, or does the school have a land swap with this? You know, we’ve just gone through the entire catalog of available land in the community, in every corner of the community, and had some that are absolutely non-starters.”

Here’s where the ponies get traded.

The city currently owns the parcel of land — just shy of five acres — on the BHS side of Medary and Fifth where the track, football practice field and teener baseball fields are. It would trade that land to the school system for the parcel of land on the other side of the street — two T-ball fields and soccer fields are there now — which the school system currently owns.

“I said this in public meetings: I was definitely very lukewarm on that location from the beginning of the conversation. It was not on my radar at all. And I don’t know that it was on anyone on the Council’s radar,” Wendell said. “We’ve got property that the city currently owns, that the school probably wants, and this is property that the school currently owns that we could perhaps use.

Maybe this makes good sense. The actual construction cost of the facility just continues to escalate. So if there’s a way that we could build it on property that we don’t have to pay for, obviously that’s gonna help a little bit, because the cost of acquiring land is just going to make the price tag grow even more.

“It was attractive from that perspective, and checked some boxes, and it’s adjacent to neighborhoods, so I think there’s some upside there. And I happen to think that building a public facility in a neighborhood that would benefit from some investment can be a really good thing.”

Known concerns
The Council knew they would get some pushback no matter where was identified for a new station — and expected a fair amount for the Medary location.

Specifically, traffic on Medary and the surrounding roads near that intersection is already a handful multiple times each weekday during the school year. Adding a large government facility to the area would likely exacerbate that situation, even with proper management of shift change times — which would have to be negotiated with a union workforce.

The city would lose significant park space in town — space that does get frequent use in the summer especially, and those uses for soccer and baseball would have to be made up elsewhere.

Then there are the optics. While some folks like the feeling of safety a police station between two schools would provide, others are not wild about the same situation. It is worth noting, generations of Brookings children went to elementary and middle schools basically directly across from the jail.

Another concern raised during the initial public meetings: Registered sex offenders would be required by law to report periodically to a police station nestled between an elementary school and the town’s high school.

Ripple effects
Then there are the long-term — and further reaching — concerns.

Though no public discussions are underway, it’s not hard to imagine the school district’s interest in the parcel containing the track for a future on-campus football facility.

The Bobcats have played their home games on the SDSU campus for a generation now, but there remains strong community support for a return to BHS. The two frequently cited spaces for such a facility are the parcel the school would acquire in this proposed swap or the site of the old bus depot off 8th Street South.

Such a move could, however, leave the Brookings baseball organization the odd man out. They would potentially lose not only the little league field, but also eventually the teener field behind the current BHS track — the only field that fits the dimensions for the developmental years between little league and high school and Legion baseball.

There’s also, as Wendell stressed, a positive impact of building a new government building in a neighborhood. Would the city be best served with two schools and a police station all at one intersection? Or would that investment go further at, say, Southside Park on South Main Avenue? That smaller parcel might necessitate a multi-story building but cause fewer ripples in the city’s pond.

And what about the land where the police station currently sits? The city would surely have a vested interest in what got developed just a block west of Main, but that could set up another kerfuffle with local developers, as happened when the city made a deal to bring Target and Aldi to town.

What’s next?
And so, Wendell stressed over coffee last week, the council needs public feedback. They scheduled a study session for their meeting on Jan. 20 to both hear from citizens and walk folks through some of the other possible sites.

No site is perfect, he said, and tradeoffs will have to be made. Any site where the land would have to be purchased, for example, would likely lead to a bond issue to makeup that cost.

“We’ve just gone through the entire catalog of available land in the community, in every corner of the community, and had some that are absolutely non-starters. So just for example, there’s some privately held property that there’s folks that have been like, I don’t really want to sell that. Or this is the price tag, and that’s an unreasonable number.”
But such are the choices a steadily growing city of this size must make at this point in development. And the Council is heavily invested in driving some kind of consensus on these decisions.

Wendell said one of the top concerns at the initial public meetings was what had eliminated some sites from consideration, so the council hopes to be able to share that information in depth, as well as the pros and cons of five viable sites on Jan. 20.

“We encourage people to come out to the study session on the 20th if they have thoughts, comments, concerns or ideas,” Wendell said. “It isn’t that we have endless options. I think most people sort of understand and appreciate that, but at the same time, I know they’re thinking, There’s got to be another place, right? There’s got to be another location that could be viable.”

Linehan is the Beacon’s managing editor and welcomes tips and comments to BrookingsBeacon@gmail.com