Stamford Police Department unveils its new headquarters
John Nickerson
STAMFORD — City police officers gave a rousing welcome to their new station, which was opened to the public Tuesday morning, the 125th anniversary of the Police Department’s founding.
Using a colossal pair of shears, Mayor David Martin, in front of some 250 people gathered for the event, cut a ribbon to the $44 million building with the help of outgoing police Chief Jon Fontneau.Work on the project began almost three years ago as crews prepared to move the historic Hoyt Barnum House off the Bedford Street property. The site then underwent months of blasting through granite before construction began on the new 94,000-square-foot building. The headquarters more than doubles in size the station it replaces, built in 1956 and expanded in 1980.The department’s longest serving officer, Capt. Gregory Tomlin, who joined just after Thanksgiving in 1971, said he remembered walking around the new addition to 805 Bedford St. with then-Chief Victor Cizanckas, who told him that building would last the department into the next century.
At the time, it was hard for Tomlin to fathom, but the building surpassed even Cizanckas’s prediction.
Over the years, Tomlin’s impression of the old building changed — and not for the better.
“I remembered in 2005 saying the now famous remark, ‘This place is a dump.’ It took us a while, but we now have ourselves a new shiny police building,” he said. “You just don’t realize how fast things change.”
There is no word on when the old police headquarters will close. Although some furniture has been moved into the new building, no officers are stationed there yet.
Martin said the city has seen great changes since the addition was built nearly 39 years ago, when there were 75,000 people living in Stamford. Currently the city has about 131,000 residents and may have already surpassed New Haven as the state’s second most populous city.
“This building a long time ago outlasted its usefulness,” Martin said about the old headquarters. “At the same time, this city has prospered, grown — and the demands and complexities of policing in a diverse city in the modern ages is much, much different than 125 years ago, or when this building was first constructed on the street in 1956. It is unfortunate that this city took so long to come to the recognition that this building had to go.”
As well as thanking many who had a hand in helping to complete the building within a couple months of its initial target date, the mayor also thanked the city’s police officers and firefighters.
“It is not the police building that makes them special. It is not the equipment, which is the measure of your abilities. It is what you do each and every day,” Martin said. “As I have said before, you put on those uniforms and you say to others in this community that if necessary you are willing to risk everything you have to protect this community, my family and the lives in this community and that is my definition of a hero.”
Fontneau, who is retiring his position at the end of the week, said he wanted to assure everyone in attendance that it was not every day that a building like this opens up. “This has been a major endeavor and I personally want to thank you, Mayor Martin, for not kicking the can down the road by approving this project and investing in our community,” he said.
Fontneau called the old headquarters a “tired, sick building that has many issues which come with age.”
For years, the city provided bottled water for the building because lead levels in the drinking water were so high. Five years ago officials posted warning signs for asbestos.
“I might add I was born in 1956 as well,” Fontneau added. “So, it’s time to go.”The chief said the city has gone though many changes over the past six decades, including its boom period of recent years. “We often joke that if there was to be an official bird to the city it would be a crane,” Fontneau said to laughs.
The new building, at 725 Bedford St., will allow the department to increase efficiency by bringing all of the units of the Police Department under one roof, Fontneau said. Currently the Training Division, Bomb Squad, Collision Analysis Reconstruction Squad, the motorcycle patrol, the police vehicle maintenance unit, the K-9 Unit and the Special Response Team are housed in other areas of the city. Fontneau also said the new department’s enlarged parking garage should free up the many parking spaces the department has been using for its cruisers on Bedford and Hoyt streets.
The chief said he was particularly happy with the large community room just off the police lobby, which can be used for the department’s Citizen Police Academy, little league registration, neighborhood meetings and safe shelter for those in need.
“I consider every day of my service a gift for which I am very grateful,” Fontneu said. “I’m proud of this city and I’m proud of this police department and there is a very bright future ahead for both.”
Capt. William Mullin, one of only five officers still serving from the era prior to the 1980 addition on the old station, is a fan of the new headquarters.
“It’s very big, beautiful. It is really nice and it is great we can house all the other departments in here,” said Mullin, who runs the Training Division and joined the department in 1973. “All the future officers coming on are going to appreciate it.”