In Williams Architects’ final presentation to Riverside’s village board about the rebuild the firm has designed of the village’s public safety facility, staffers emphasized the village’s willingness to compromise on space to reduce cost while pointing out some aspects that cannot be downsized.
Riverside is preparing to pose a referendum question to voters in April 2027 in order to fund the project to fully overhaul the joint police and fire facilities at 31 Riverside Road adjacent to the township hall. The project is expected to cost $29.98 million. The referendum, if approved, will allow the village to issue $29.99 million of bond debt to cover $22.37 million in construction costs.
The other $7.62 million will be split into $3.91 million for soft costs like legal fees, design costs and debt interest; $1.97 million set aside for unexpected contingencies; and $1.73 million for expected price escalation on construction costs between now and 2028, when construction would begin.
In the presentation, Andy Dogan, the managing principal of Williams Architects, reviewed the project’s nine years in the making, over which time Riverside officials and staff have pushed the architectural designers to minimize the new facility’s proposed footprint.
“You have challenged us to be as efficient as possible with space, to multi-purpose spaces. Staff has been very willing to look at maximum use of spaces and optimizing spaces for proper use and efficiency,” Dogan told trustees on Thursday, Oct. 1. “Your staff are willing to make space sacrifices and right-sized spaces in a way that many other villages are not.”
The presentation included new sketch-style visualizations of the proposed building’s exterior and interior spaces from different angles, including the fire department’s apparatus bay and decontamination spaces and shared programming and fitness spaces that public safety staff and community members alike will be able to use.
“We don’t want people to fixate too much on the design because we know it’s not done yet. This is our first, best effort to put forward what we feel are a couple of good designs,” said Joseph Juhl, an architect with Williams and a Riverside resident.
Dogan pointed out the project’s relatively low cost compared to other new police stations in suburban Cook County, including those in Libertyville, Wilmette and Geneva costing those municipalities upwards of $43 million. He spoke out against the idea that Williams might be pushing Riverside to expand the project in order to reap more revenue.
“Sometimes, we see things like, ‘Of course an architect wants to build the biggest or most elaborate building they can. They make more money,’” Dogan said. “We are successful when our clients are successful, and our clients are successful when they do thoughtful improvements that benefit the community and land responsibly within budget.”
He said a remodel of the existing facility rather than the proposed rebuild would cost around $20 million but would not result in increased space for Riverside’s first responders or create new space for community use while being more difficult to make comply with the village’s Road to 2025 climate action and resilience plan.
Dogan said comparing the per-capita cost of facilities would be fraught, as public safety vehicles have standard sizes to account for that do not correspond to the size of the municipality they serve.
In response to a question from Trustee Elizabeth Kos that she said residents had asked her, Dogan said the facility had been designed with growing vehicle sizes in mind.
“It would be incredibly irresponsible to design a building around the exact fleet you have at this point in time, expecting that that will last 75 to 100 years or more, like we want this building to,” he said.
Dogan said the building had been designed with potential flooding from the Des Plaines River in mind as well, with the grading levels of the basement and floors above it set in order to avoid the effect of floodwaters on Riverside’s parked public safety vehicles.
Trustee Jill Mateo lauded Dogan, Juhl and architect Kim Nigro for their presentation.
“We’ve seen these [presentations] before, and it still isn’t repetitive. I’m still learning something new each time. We’re better understanding why it’s the size that it is,” Mateo said. “Even though it’s consolidated, we’re really minimizing how much space we’re using but still serving both departments and the community.”
