LETTER: We need a new police building and it should be downtown

In 1968, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was sworn in as Prime Minister, Yale University began admitting women for the first time in its (then) 267 year history, and, closer to home, the Sault Ste. Marie Police Service Building opened on Second Line.  

 

The world has changed a lot in 53 (soon-to-be 54) years, but the Sault Ste. Marie Police Station has remained the same. Yes, there was an addition in 1991, but the reality is, our 21st century police service is being run from a 20th century relic. 

The warning signs have been growing over time. Nearly a decade ago, in 2013, then Police Chief Davies called the police station a money pit, and noted the building’s holding cells were the subject of a human rights complaint for not being accessible.   

In 2010, an engineering review of the property determined the building was “at capacity”, was energy inefficient, lighting inefficient, needed new windows and was poorly insulated.  A flood in 2012 didn’t help things.   

Fast forward to present day, and another police chief, Hugh Stevenson, agrees the building is a money pit. The police service spends almost $175,000 per year on maintenance of the building. In their 2022 budget, they requested an additional $200,000 in maintenance funds. I pushed to deny that request for additional funding. We shouldn’t be spending a total of $375,000 per year on maintenance of a 50-plus-year-old building. Council agreed and the police service budget is likely to go back to the police board for approval of the budget without the additional $200,000 for maintenance.  

While I argued against the additional maintenance monies for the reasons set out above, the message that the request was sending was clear:  the building is old, inefficient and expensive. It needs to be replaced. The $175,000 that goes to maintenance each year could surely pay a substantial portion of the mortgage for a new building.   

With a new building, the goal shouldn’t just be to house our police force. 

A new building presents an opportunity for greater renewal. 

For decades, office and retail has moved from downtown to uptown. Let’s begin the process of returning some of those jobs into the downtown core.   

The downtown association has been asking for greater police presence in our core since at least 2017. 

The library is saying extra security is needed because of lag times in police response to the main branch. What better way to support those requests than to put the whole department in the heart of our city. 

The Neighbourhood Resource Centre on Gore Street was a popular service while it operated from 2014 to 2020. Rolling a service like that into a new police station and making it permanent is the type of expansion of services that could be made at an incremental cost if a new police station was built.  

Locating the police station downtown isn’t unprecedented. 

Before moving up to Second Line, the police service operated from what is now the crown attorney’s office between Queen Street and Albert Street. 

There is no shortage of empty property and run-down buildings downtown that could use redevelopment. The process to find a site for a new building, and plan for its construction, should start now. This will take time to plan out and build. By the time it is ready to open, the Second Line police station will have reached retirement age. 

Let’s plan to have a new police station ready before then and let’s make sure we put it in the ideal spot to service our community for the next 60 years. 

Matthew Shoemaker, City Councillor - Ward 3