2/13/2001
Specific sites for three new police district stations were proposed Tuesday by the Public Building Commission of Chicago.
These are proposed new sites for the Englewood (7th), Deering (9th) and Monroe (12th) police stations.
All of these sites are just proposals based on the operational needs of the Chicago Police Department to have stations strategically located in the districts that also are easily accessible to the public. Public comment on these proposed sites is invited and City Council approval is necessary before they are finalized.
“These new stations will be community anchors that will help make the city safer,” said Mayor Richard M. Daley, who also chairs the PBC. “Replacing old, outmoded buildings, the new facilities will be much larger structures that contain the latest computer technology and have space for community policing programs.”
Based on a prototype design, each of these new stations will be about 42,000 square-feet-at least double the size of the buildings to be replaced. Separate locker room facilities for male and female officers will be included, as will large parking lots. All of the stations will be fully accessible to people with disabilities.
Each new station also will feature a fitness room, equipment to conduct video bond hearings for the time when such procedures are implemented by the court system, and a “quiet room” where officers can find refuge following a traumatic situation.
Since 1999, new stations have opened in the 1st, 6th, 16th and 18th police districts, as well as the new Police Headquarters building in Bronzeville. By the end of Daley’s Neighborhoods Alive 21 program, a total of 19 district stations will have been replaced or substantially renovated.
The proposed location of the new Englewood district station is the second one offered by the PBC; the original site at 63rd and Ashland was withdrawn following local opposition. The new site, on the north side of West 63rd Street between Loomis and Laflin streets, is about two blocks east of the originally proposed site.
It would replace the current Englewood District station at 6120 S. Racine Ave., a building constructed in 1954.
The other two proposed sites are:
- Deering District, where a new building on the west side of the 3100 block of South Halsted Street would replace the current station, constructed in 1938, at 3501 S. Lowe Ave.
- Monroe District, with a new station on the west side of Ashland Avenue between 14th Place and 15th Street replacing the current building at 100 S. Racine Ave., constructed in 1949.
