Things had gotten pretty cramped at the Windsor Police Department.
With 52 sworn officers and 13 civilian staff, the roughly 17,000-square-foot building at 200 N. 11th St. — which opened in 2010 and was built to house just more than 30 officers — was basically bursting at the seams.
With the opening of the new 43,330-square-foot department Wednesday, the staff will finally get a chance to spread their legs a little bit.
"It's kind of a feeling of, 'Wow, we have room to breathe now,' " Commander Richard Ziegler said. "We were so cramped into the other building."
The new $30 million station at 960 N. 15th St. was funded without any debt or financing, according to town staff. Most of the funding came from the town's capital improvement fund and cash reserves. Construction finished nearly six months ahead of schedule,
When Ziegler — who started at the department in the '80s before a stint at the Fort Collins Police Department — returned to Windsor in 2016, he had plenty of space to stretch out his legs.
That didn't last long.
"When I got here, there was still quite a bit of room," he said. "But over several years, we took up every square inch of it for other things."
Since the old building was finished in 2010, Windsor's population has more than doubled — up to 44,000 from just over 18,000. The department mimicked that growth. The training room became the house of the new investigations unit, and every empty archive storage area was soon turned into an office.
Since Windsor police didn't want to get in the habit of building a new station every 15 years, they left an area on the north side of the new department for future growth.
"If we needed to, we could add between 10,000 and 20,000 more square feet, so we'll have the ability to add on," Ziegler said. "Hopefully that won't be for quite a while, but I guess we said that at the previous building."
As currently constructed, the news space already opens up in-house opportunities the department had long ago sized out of.
"We can actually bring in outside instructors and host trainings for other departments," Ziegler said. "The last several years, we've had to borrow training space from other police departments or go to other town of Windsor buildings."
The new station will also be equipped with technology to allow officers to monitor ongoing situations by watching footage from either drones or body cameras.
"We can get an idea of the scope of an incident," Ziegler said. "It definitely helps us make decisions because we have more information available to make those decisions."
And though all details are not yet finalized, the old police station is slated to undergo some small renovations before other town departments move in.
The public is invited to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony from 1-5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 13. It will include an open house and tours of the new building.
"It's an exciting time for us," Ziegler said."We have some room to do our work and help serve the community better."
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