Photo By Jean Falbo-Sosnovich
(Left to right) Ansonia Mayor David Cassetti and acting Ansonia Police Chief Wayne Williams.
ANSONIA — A multi-million dollar police station in the former Farrel Corp. office building downtown is now open for business.
Acting Police Chief Wayne Williams and Mayor David Cassetti gave the Valley Indy a tour of the new digs at 65 Main St. Wednesday, marveling over the transformation of the previously vacant building into a modern headquarters for the Ansonia Police Department’s 38 officers and 10 civilian employees.
The administration sees the new police department as a new anchor downtown, where hundreds of residential units are currently under construction.
“We will be the envy of the state with this new facility,” Cassetti said. “This is certainly one of the highlights of my administration. The residents and the police officers deserve this.”
The police had been housed in the 125-year old former Larkin Elementary School on Elm Street, in ultra-cramped quarters. That building had minimal parking, required conversion of a closet into a juvenile holding cell and a bathroom converted into a locker room for female officers, lacked storage for evidence and records and had a leaky roof, among of myriad of other issues associated with the antiquated building.
Click here for a previous story on the old headquarters.
Fast forward to 2021, and Williams said moving headquarters from Elm Street to Main Street is “like night and day.”
Williams and the entire force, along with some help from Public Works employees, made the move this week into the new, 22,000-square-foot space. Williams expects the old station on Elm Street to be “padlocked” on Friday. The future of that old building has yet to be written.
A 32-year veteran of the force, Williams said the new place has individual interview rooms, new technology, a spacious lobby, a community room for public events, several conference rooms, records room, handicapped-accessible cells, a lunch room with its own kitchen, a detective bureau “double the size” of the old facility, a roll call room that doesn’t need to share space with administrators’ offices, an administrative wing, and a computer crime lab.
Photo By Jean Falbo-Sosnovich
An exterior shot of the new police building.
“I’ve spent my whole career at the other building, and it was certainly time for a new home,” Williams said. “This facility is going to help the officers perform their jobs more effectively and more efficiently. Everything is right at their fingertips now.”
At the old place, Williams said a lack of space forced paperwork and boxes to be scattered across tables and in hallways, and now the new evidence room has five times the space.
When a juvenile suspect came in, Williams said in order to keep the minors separate from adult criminals, a closet had to be converted into a makeshift holding cell. A lunch break meant crowding around one table in the old facility, while the new station boasts its own kitchen, plenty of tables and a TV.
No longer will prisoners have to be sent to area departments because the old facility only had three cells, and the new one has eight. There is a separate stairwell and elevator for prisoner transport to avoid any public interaction, and more than 70 surveillance cameras throughout the new facility. And the previously tiny and cramped records room, along with the small, dark dispatch center of yesterday, have been majorly upgraded to large, modern spaces better suited to assist the public.
Longtime Ansonia Police Dispatcher Scott Patterson, a 19-year employee, was amazed when he took his seat this week behind his new computer monitor, surrounded by a large bank of surveillance monitors and modern technology.
“I’m still processing everything,” Patterson said. “Everything is newer and better and everything works.”
Cassetti likened going from the old police station into the new one to moving from the “19th century into the 21st century” with all the modern upgrades. But the road getting here wasn’t so easy.
The city had to seize the Farrel property through eminent domain from its former owners, Shaw Growth Ventures, and paid $1.8 million to do so.
The city held a referendum back in November 2016 gaining approval to bond about $12 million for a new cop shop — one that was originally supposed to go Olson Drive. The Board of Aldermen, in June 2020, authorized borrowing an additional $3.1 million to finish the renovations to 65 Main St., which will also include a new senior center and improvements to the two floors of the indoor parking garage.
Bantom Construction Co. of North Haven served as general contractor of the project. Cassetti lauded the police building committee and others for turning a long-overdue project into a reality.
