Published: 10/25/2007
Police chief backs old temple as new station By Mike Stucka Staff writer
SWAMPSCOTT - The old Temple Israel building should become the town's new police station and perhaps a community center, says the group studying the property, but the recommendation is far from a done deal.
Police Chief Ronald Madigan, an ex-officio member of the Temple Israel Study Committee, said the big structure at 837 Humphrey St. would be the cheapest replacement for an overcrowded, sometimes dangerous police station.
"There are a number of problems, and this would solve all of them," Madigan said.
The Temple Israel Study Committee spent a year and a half studying the building, which has been serving as a temporary Town Hall since the summer. While the building would allow the police station to roughly triple in size, to some 15,000 square feet, a majority of the structure could remain free for other uses, Madigan said.
Madigan said the police station was built in the 1930s, can't hold female prisoners and wasn't designed to host female officers. Intoxicated prisoners have fallen down the steps going to the holding cells, and an officer was out of work for a year after he was injured escorting a prisoner down two flights of narrow stairs, Madigan said. The prisoners also have to be brought through common areas that aren't always secure.
"As I'm talking to you, I'm looking at a hole a prisoner kicked in the wall," the chief said in a telephone interview.
The recommendation for a police station in the lower level will need to be reconciled with other town initiatives, Town Moderator Martin Goldman said.
A different buildings committee formed this spring is studying all of the town's surplus or potentially surplus properties, including a former senior center on Burrill Street that's across from the police station. Meanwhile, a school-master-plan committee is reviewing the former Machon School and the former middle school on Greenwood Avenue. Recommendations on the school properties are due by March 31, School Committee Chairman David Whelan said. Any changes would have to be approved at Town Meeting, possibly next spring, Goldman said.
"I'm hopeful that everything will be tied together by Town Meeting. It is ambitious but doable," he said.
Study committee member Garrold Baker said the group will pass its recommendation on to the town's master-plan committee.
Madigan said the building could be renovated into a police station for another $2.9 million. The town paid $3.25 million for the old temple. A new, stand-alone police station would be the best, but the Temple Israel proposal makes financial sense, he said.
Goldman said the police station would be about $1 million cheaper to build in Temple Israel while keeping another 20,000 to 25,000 square feet free for other uses. The committee discussed teen, arts and community centers, he said.
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