There will be at least two more meetings of the PoliceFacility Task Force before a decision is made, but after a tour of the three contending sites for a new Batavia PD HQ, there seemed to be a consensus forming around the Swan Street location.
At Alva and Bank, committee members expressed concern about vehicle and pedestrian traffic and the impact on surrounding businesses, as well as the security of the facility. At Jackson Street, the current Salvation Army location, the floodplain issue looms large. On Swan Street, there was none of that negative chatter while committee members walked the expansive open lot where the Wiard Plow factory once stood.
Chief Shawn Heubusch likes the location.
"I think it's an optimal location," Heubusch said. "It gives us the security we would need. It gives us the ability to get to places we need to get to in a timely fashion. You're not fighting with the traffic you're fighting with on the main thoroughfares at those other locations and you can't beat the lot size here."
The committee will meet next week to hear from Assistant City Manager Gretchen Difante and Code Enforcement Officer Ron Panek about the floodplain issues at the Salvation Army location and then the committee would like to hold a public meeting a couple of weeks later so that local residents can learn a bit of what the committee learned about all the locations considered and be given a chance to weigh in and perhaps raise issues not yet discussed by the committee.
One of Difante's current duties is developing a program that will lower the cost of flood insurance in the city. One part of that process is improving the city's score in a flood-readiness rating system. Building a critical facility in a floodplain would lower the city's score. How much and what the impact on residents flood-insurance policies would be is something the committee will learn about its next meeting.
But even with community rating aside, City Manager Jason Molino conceded during a discussion at the Salvation Army site, building a police headquarters in a floodplain is not optimal as a practical matter.
In a major flood, about 40 percent of the workforce won't be available, Molino said, because people will be dealing with their own family issues, and a police HQ would become difficult to access, compounding the problem.
"The last major flood was in 1942, so you could say we're due for another 100-year flood in the next 30 years," Molino said. "It's likely to happen within our lifetimes, within the next half century."
Marc Staley, chairman of the task force, said he's pretty much taken Jackson Street off his list, is leaning toward Swan Street. But he looks on the Alva and Bank location more favorably after walking the lot and hearing what others have to say about the location. It would help improve density Downtown and could spur more economic activity in the city's primary commercial district.
"I think space-wise, this (Swan Street) is fantastic," Staley said. "It's out of the floodplain, cost-wise, it's within our reach, and it could spur economic development in the area. It's a part of the city that has had very little investment over the past 40 or 50 years. The fact that it's so close to Ellicott and so close to Main means it's really in the heart of the city. People don't think of this as the heart of the city, but we're so close to everything right here."
The committee and members of the local media were shuttled to the three locations in the police department's ERT van.
