Thomas Wells | Buy at photos.djournal.com
Starkville Police Department Cpl. Brandon Lovelady checks on the progress of the renovation of what will become the new Starkville police Department on East Lampkin Street.
By William Moore
Daily Journal
STARKVILLE – In just a month and a half, the Starkville Police will be ready to move into their brand new home.
The nine-month, $4.48-million project to convert the former city hall at 101 East Lampkin St. into a stand-alone police department is on schedule to be completed next month.
“The contract ends May 20, and everything is still on schedule,” said SPD public information officer Corp. Brandon Lovelady. “If there are any delays, they should be minor.”
Crews with Columbus-based Weathers Construction have already installed the metal stud walls that will create future offices. The plumbing and electrical work has been run though some walls, allowing drywall to be installed to give visitors a better sense of what the headquarters will look like.
From the outside, the National Guard Armory built around 1940 will maintain its Art Moderne style exterior. The inside will be completely different. The building was gutted, leaving only the 8-inch thick exterior walls.
Since the original building plans were long since lost, the deconstruction process revealed several surprises, some good and some bad, said project architect Sally Zahner.
“We learned that a previous renovation took out a structural load-bearing wall that left the roof cantilevering,” Zahner said. “There have been some nice surprises as well. We found several interior windows that we were able to save and incorporate in the design.”
Thomas Wells | Buy at photos.djournal.com
Motorists pass the police station in Starkville where the renovation is scheduled to be completed by May.
In order to keep costs down, some things had to be cut. Others were scaled back through value engineering. But the centerpiece of the building will still be the briefing room on the former stage of the old gymnatorium.
“The proscenium (the arch that separates the stage from the audience) stays and the footlights stay,” Zahner said. “The Department of Archives strongly requested that we keep those, along with the shuffleboard court painted on the stage. We were also able to save three original stage lights.”
One thing they will not save nor reuse is the old firing range under the stage. While the range has not been used in at least four decades, the 1,300-pound, half-inch-thick steel backstop remains.
While the building will retain a strong sense of history (upstairs corridors will be open to the vaulted ceiling), it is being wired to handle the latest technology with room for expansion. The Emergency Operations Center will receive feeds from public surveillance cameras across town, as well as Mississippi Department of Transportation traffic cameras on nearby highways.
“On (Mississippi State University) football weekends, we will be able to monitor traffic and the situation downtown and head off problems a little quicker,” Lovelady said.
The police department started sharing space in city hall in 1968. When the city administration moved to the new city hall two blocks away in October 2015, it left the old building for the police to expand. The renovation will triple the department’s space, jumping to around 29,000-square-feet.
To fund the project, the Starkville Board of Aldermen issued $5.4 million in bonds. The project was delayed seven weeks when the initial bids came in over budget. To reduce costs, a sally port, secure parking lot and rehabilitation of the drug court were removed.
When the Weathers bid came in about $1 million under the finding level, the excess was placed in a contingency fund. Starkville Mayor Parker Wiseman has said the parking lot and drug court renovations would be first in line for any extra funds.
william.moore@journalinc.com