As Riverside works its way up to a referendum next April that could enable the village to rebuild its public safety facilities near Township Hall from the ground up, officials are inviting residents to tour the existing facilities to see why they say new construction is so badly needed.
The tours are led by Public Safety Director Matthew Buckley, who acts as the head of both Riverside’s police department and its fire department. The proposed new facility, which is still undergoing design work amid open houses and other opportunities for the community to give feedback, would consolidate both departments into one building that is designed for each of them.
Current estimates show the price to build the new facility from the ground, with an estimated groundbreaking in 2028, to be just shy of $30 million. In order to issue debt in that amount to pay for the new facility, the village needs voters to pass a referendum question in next April’s election. So, officials have set up the tours as a way to show off the need for the rebuild to residents first-hand.
Buckley said most of the attendants of the tours, of which there have been four so far, have come in with “not a lot” of knowledge about the conditions inside.
“They see the outside of the building. They may have been in the lobby of the police department. They may have walked by the firehouse with the doors open,” he told the Landmark. “But nobody’s really gone into the basement area or the back areas of the department where we operate and work on a daily basis. To see that, I think, is really telltale for residents.”
Right now, the two departments share space at 31 Riverside Rd., which Buckley said resulted in everyone doing as much as possible with all the space they can get. The police department lives on the west side of the building, while a door between the lobby and the fire truck bay connects it to the fire department on the east side.
When Landmark staff took the tour on Thursday, June 18, Buckley first led the group through the police department’s administrative offices in the upper level. Then, he took us through its lower level, which includes the police lunchroom, men’s and women’s locker rooms with only one shower each, a conference room and even the evidence room, which was stacked high to the ceiling with boxes of evidence from different crimes and had a faint, stereotypical smell of cannabis.
Then, Buckley led us through the fire department space, which is mostly comprised of the fire truck bay and some other meager spaces. On the second floor, a small room with two beds and an attached kitchen and bathroom serves as the space where on-call firefighters spend their nights. Firefighters have an overnight space in Fire Station #2 across the train tracks as well, but that one is even more cramped and doesn’t have a kitchen.
Finally, Buckley took the group through the dilapidated former youth center at 45 Riverside Rd., which houses a combined classroom and gym that serves as a training area for the village’s first responders. The police department took over the building from the public works department in 1998, and it houses Riverside TV offices to this day. The training space features boarded-up windows and molding ceiling tiles due to water damage. As we walked up the front stairs, Buckley warned the group about getting dripped on.
Buckley said most people who have gone on the tours have come out the other side understanding the village’s need to rebuild the facilities.
“A lot of people walk out saying, ‘Yep, you need it.’ They get to see it firsthand,” he said. “Once in a while, you hear, ‘But the cost.’ Yes, but the cost. I get it, unfortunately. I’m going to be paying for it also. I live in Riverside. I definitely know it needs to be done.”
While some residents may balk at the $30 million price tag, Buckley said the figure is light compared to public safety facilities in other communities.
“We have really [planned] a scaled-down facility to what a lot of other places are doing. I have friends in other municipalities that are building stations currently, and the price tag is a lot more, in the $30 million to $45 million range,” he said. “To me, it’s one of those things of, if you want to live in a nice town like Riverside, you’re going to have to pay a little bit more to get a facility that, to be honest, I wish would have been redone 25 years ago.”
If you missed the first four tours in June, don’t worry. Buckley said more dates will be scheduled for the summer and fall, and residents can even inquire about private tours if the times you can sign up for online won’t work for your schedules.
“The more people we get to see it and experience it, the better off it’s going to be,” he said.
