By Lacey Watt
MCCORDSVILLE — With shovels in the dirt and smiles and laughter shared amongst the crowd, town officials and many others posed for the photo opportunity of the groundbreaking for the new police station, to be located off of CR 750 N.
Tim Gropp, McCordsville’s town manager, shared that this project was planned to be a 20-plus-year project, meaning that the facility will have plenty of room to grow into and a new facility will not need to be built for a long time.
The town’s police department currently operates out of McCordsville Town Hall, located at 6280 W. 800 N, and is around 1,800 square feet of space. The new station, which will be on the south side of the currently developing McCord Square, will be approximately between 15,000 and 17,000 square feet according to a rough estimate by Gropp, which includes an indoor gym and an indoor shooting range for practice. Gropp shared that the total costs should come in just under their maximum for the project, $12 million.
“To be able to figure it out — we’re a small town, still growing and so it’s hard to find money for these kinds of things but we were able to figure it out, and we knew this was our number one priority so we’re making it happen.”
Currently there are 16 active police officers with the department and four open positions.
McCordsville Police Chief Paul Casey spoke at the groundbreaking, mentioning that he wanted to thank everyone involved and who attended, and that it was important he was speaking on behalf of all the police officers of the department.
McCordsville Town Council president Greg Brewer shared that he wanted to thank his fellow council members for quickly coming together for the new police station.
“I don’t think people realize how quickly we came together and said, ‘You know, this is going to be a project’,” Brewer said. “We met at the end of January and the biggest piece of that was, were sitting there in a room and Tim Gropp says ‘I’m going to show you guys how you can afford a police station’.”
Brewer also stated that in a year he hopes that they are back on location, cutting a ribbon and the police officers will be in their new home.
“We want other police departments to come look at us and go, ‘This is how you build a police station.’,” Brewer said. “We want to be a destination for future officers… to come and be in a community that makes an investment in public safety.”
Gropp shared that the 12-month project is on schedule to be finished in the third quarter of 2024. Meyer Najem is the construction manager, with RQAW being the architect, A&F Engineering as the civil engineer and GM Development as the developer for the project.
“This is a much-needed facility. We’ve been operating in too small of space for too long with not modern facilities that are expected of a current modern police department,” Gropp said. “We’ve been in a cramped space. We’ve been making do and, you know, we have a wonderful group of officers that make it work and don’t complain, but it’s time to invest.”
