Lake County News-Sun |

Lake Forest ready to buy building for police department move; ‘Having additional space allows flexibility to meet future needs’

Lake Forest officials are poised to take action on a plan where the city would spend well over $30 million to move the city’s police headquarters to an existing building in the Conway Park office complex.

City Council members may vote Monday to finalize a purchase sale agreement for a now-vacant office building at 1925 Field Court at Conway Park. If the building is acquired, the city plans to retrofit the 100,000-square-foot structure and move its police headquarters from its longtime location in the 200 block of Deerpath Road.

Mayor Stanford “Randy” Tack believes the 22,000-square-foot Deerpath Road facility, the headquarters of both the city’s police and fire departments, is no longer the right space for the future. It has served as the police department headquarters since the late 1960s.

“The current Public Safety Building is, and has been, inadequate and undersized for numerous years,” Tack wrote in an e-mail sent through city spokeswoman Dana Olson. “There is no opportunity to upgrade the current site to serve as a combined fire/police facility that will meet modern public safety standards. Replacement has been on the capital improvement plan for some time.”

In April, the City Council approved a purchase-sale agreement for the Conway Park building, allowing 90 days to perform a space-needs analysis and site assessment ahead of finalizing the purchase.

At a July 1 workshop, an architectural firm broke down the costs of the potential retrofit into two categories, a “need to have” list that would allow current operational needs with short-term growth using almost 50,000 square feet of the building. It also provided a larger “nice to have” scenario, believing that would better serve long-term needs using almost 60,000 square feet of the building.

The “need to have” category has a cost estimate of between $24.4 million to $25.6 million. The “nice to have” category ranged from $27.5 million to $28.8 million.

The space-needs analysis highlighted 13 separate portions of the building, such as evidence processing and storage areas, social services spaces and investigation offices/interview rooms.

With just a couple of exceptions, the individual spaces would be larger than what it is in place now at the Deerpath Road building in either category, with the “nice to have” category having a larger footprint in most cases.

Either way, the building would have additional space that could be used in the future, according to Olson, the city spokeswoman.

“Police operations have changed significantly in the 10 to 20 years, so that having additional space allows flexibility to meet future needs,” she said.

However, there would be other costs with the potential move, including 10-year asset replacement capital projections now estimated at $6.2 million, and non-capital building costs, including maintenance and HVAC services, estimated to be $252,000 per year if the entire building is used.

The purchase of the building itself would be $3.5 million, which city officials said would represent a great savings as it was appraised at $12.5 million in 2022.

Another looming expenditure is if the police department does move out of the Deerpath Road facility, that building would have to be converted to a single-use facility for the fire department. Olson said the city does not have an estimate how much that would cost.

Yet city officials said converting the existing building would save millions in costs as opposed to new construction.

“We explored other options and any other alternative would be significantly more expensive than this option,” Tack wrote. “This opportunity is not just about the immediate expense but about preventing future City Councils and generations of taxpayers from paying significantly higher costs to construct a new police facility.”

The potential large expenditure comes after last year the city spent roughly $16 million on construction costs for a renovation of the Deerpath Community Park. Also, residents are now seeing higher property tax bills following the approval last year of a $105.7 million bond sale referendum to update Lake Forest High School. The city and school districts are separate units of government.

However, Tack believes it is worth it to move forward with the Field Court building.

“The city is confident that this project can be financed while maintaining Lake Forest’s lowest tax rate in Lake County, all while avoiding significantly greater financial liabilities for future taxpayers,” he said.

Tack said it is not clear yet how the city would finance the retrofit, but the city could issue 10- or 15-year bonds, along with tapping into city reserves.

Ultimately, the City Council will have to decide whether to approve the purchase-sale agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, the city faces a July deadline to move forward on the purchase, and City Council members are set to vote at the July 15 meeting.

Alderman Eileen Looby Weber, 4th, the finance committee chairwoman, deferred questions to Tack.

However, Alderman Ara Goshgarian, 3rd, expressed reservations about the potential price tag of the move.

“I have strong concerns about the amount of debt we are acquiring,” Goshgarian said after the July 1 workshop. “Additionally I feel as though the process of land acquisition and a major project of this scope and size has been rushed.”

One potential way to offset some of the costs would be to lease out a portion of the building.

Tack wrote it is too early to talk about prospective tenants, but the city intends to explore leasing out any unused space.

Scott Bartlett, the president of the Conway Park Owners’ Association, the owners of the complex, supported the potential move.

“We’re excited to have the police in our park,” he said. “You couldn’t ask for a better neighbor. From a corporate security standpoint, this is outstanding.”

If the sale is approved, the design process would start followed by approval of construction bids next spring. The police could take occupancy of the new building sometime in 2026.