PHOTO GALLERY: New police station moving along

Quinte News got a look inside at what will be the new police headquarters on Friday morning.

Deputy Police Chief Mike Callaghan says staff are quite excited to get into their new building which will provide more space and will suit their needs now and into the future.

From the outside, although it still doesn’t look like much and in the interior there are only metal wall supports up, one can really see the building starting to come together.

The new building is disaster rated, which required a lot of structural work to be done on the building first. There have been 2,100 supports hung from the ceiling, the walls reinforced with rebar and poured concrete, as well as support beams being increased in size from 2″x2″ to 4″x4″.

Callaghan says the supports mean the building will have no sway in any direction.

More than 2,000 structural supports needed to be added to the building to make it disaster rated so the building will not sway if a major disaster were to occur. (Photo: Amanda Smith/Quinte News)

The facility has a community meeting room, which Deputy Chief Callaghan says is extremely important.

“We want this to be a community building,” he said while touring the facility. “If any organization that is a non-profit and is a charity, we will make this meeting space available for them.”

This space will be the new community meeting room available for charity, non-profit organizations to use going forward. (Photo: Amanda Smith/Quinte News)

He says they will also offer a safe meeting space for parents who need to exchange children or for those who may have made a purchase off a website like Kijiji and don’t want to meet at their home or a coffee shop.

He said the front of the building will be under video surveillance and will be available for people who need to make use of that safe space.

The new building will also have ample parking for visitors and staff. Currently officers and visitors to the station will line both sides of George Street because of lack of space. The new facility will have 39 visitor parking spots.

Also new to the service is the addition of the K9 unit and that space is almost complete. There will be a fenced in green space to allow for the dog to roam around.

Belleville Deputy Police Chief shows off the K9 quarters at the new police station at the corner of College and Sidney Streets during a tour on October 4, 2019. (Photo: Amanda Smith/Quinte News)

Deputy Chief Callaghan says the move can’t come soon enough as the current building has outlived its useful life.

He told Quinte News they’ve had to padlock shut one of the bathrooms because it doesn’t work because of a crushed pipe. There are buckets under doors to collect rainwater runoff and an engineer even noted a number of cracks in the foundation.

The new facility at the corner of College Street West and Sidney Street is on target for a spring move in.

Belleville Deputy Police Chief talks to Special Project Manager Joel Carr-Brant about the progress of the new police station at the corner of College and Sidney Streets during a tour on October 4, 2019. (Photo: Amanda Smith/Quinte News)

Deputy Chief Mike Callaghan in what will be his new office once the building is complete. (Photo: Amanda Smith/Quinte News)

Workers continue to make progress on the roof of what will be the new police station at the corner of College and Sidney Streets. (Photo: Amanda Smith/Quinte News)