New Lenox police station close to opening

NEW LENOX – The new and bigger New Lenox Police Station is scheduled to open in a few weeks.

Construction of the roughly $10.5 million building, 200 Veterans Parkway near Village Hall, began in September 2013. The majority of the construction is complete, with the 31,000-square-foot building now bearing the name New Lenox Police.

All that’s left is completing the finishing touches, New Lenox Police Chief Bob Sterba said. The building may open Nov. 10 but the opening date is a “moving target,” he said.

He said village officials pursued creating a new building because they "anticipate some growth in the future." The population and home building activity is expected to increase in New Lenox.

The current building near Haven Avenue, which is 14,000 square feet, doesn’t meet the needs of the police department., Sterba said.

“The building we’re currently in wasn’t designed to be a police department,” he said.

Police officials and staff have done their best to call the building home but the town is growing, he said.

Village Administrator Kurt Carroll said the current facility had small locker room space and poor lunchrooms. These issues affected the police department overall, he said.

“Space-wise it was cramped in there to begin with but there was a lot of things impacting the operations,” he said.

The new building will have a larger and safer booking area and more adequate facilities for interviewing suspects, he said.

“This modern facility will easily serve this community for 50 years or better,” he said.

That’s also what New Lenox Mayor Tim Baldermann thinks. He said the current building was never meant to be a police station but it was retrofitted with features to make it work.

The timing for building a new facility was ripe for the village. Baldermann said village officials were able to borrow money at a cheaper rate and saved an excess of about $1 million in construction costs.

“We were, in this bad economy, able to get real competitive bidding for the construction,” Baldermann said.

When the new building opens, not everything will be ready, he said. There may be several days where records and other items are transferred.