Capt. Mike Savage unveils a Greeley police badge set in tile in the front entrance of the new Greeley Police Department building in the 2800 block of 10th Street. Police officers and staff are moving into the new 78,000-square-feet building this week. Police operations will be handled out of the new facility starting 8 a.m. Monday.

Some of the police officers and staff will move into the $14.4 million building in the 2800 block of 10th Street this week. The rest will move in the next week or two, with the new police station open for business on Monday.

The new station is a big part of a $24 million public safety project plan approved by voters. Included will be a substation in downtown Greeley and the new Juvenile Assessment Center. Ground was broken for the new station a year ago.

Capt. Mike Savage has overlooked the project and worked with designers, contractors and just about everything involved in the new station. "Most of all," Savage said at the beginning of a tour last week, "we want everyone to know how grateful and thankful we are for the voters to have approved this."

Probably most striking about the new station is its size. For the past four decades, the Greeley police have used the 23,000 square-foot station downtown for the 160-person staff of officers and non-sworn employees. The new station will give them 78,000 square feet.

One of the highlights of the station is the entrance, where a huge Greeley Police Department badge has been set in tile in the floor. The room also will be adorned with old-time photographs of Greeley police photos, engraved in glass panels.

It's required in projects in Greeley now that 1 percent of the construction costs will be diverted into art. The badge on the floor and the glass panels are part of that 1 Percent For Art program.

* The Kent Donahue Conference Room, named for a 25-year veteran of the department, who left to take a job as police chief in Silve ck two years ago. The new conference room will allow the police to conduct meetings with residents and to meet as an entire department when needed. Previously, those meetings had to be in a city theater or in area churches.

* The entry area, as well as being adorned in the special arts project, also will be "ballistically rated, "which means the doors, windows and walls in the area cannot be pierced by a bullet, in case a violent incident occurs in the front area.

* For the street officers, there is a locker room, a workout room with equipment paid for by the police union, and a bunk room, where a few officers can sleep when there is a round-the-clock alert.

* There are four holding rooms for suspects who are brought in for questioning and booking. Instead of taking prisoners to the Weld County Jail and taking extra time to book them, most of the procedures can be completed at the new station.

* An enclosed garage allows officers to bring prisoners into the building in a sealed area, which greatly reduces the risk of escape and the danger to the public. At the old station, officers had to park on the street, then walk the prisoner to the back door of the station.

* A smaller building behind the large station will house an evidence storage area much larger than the old one, plus storage of gear and vehicles for the SWAT team, Bomb Squad and traffic unit. The building also has a state-of-the-art lab with air-dry rooms and blood-dry rooms, drug rooms and a refrigeration room for evidence. There also is a fumigation hood, where lab specialists can use super glue fumes to find fingerprints, "Much like you see on CSI on TV," Savage said with a smile.

In the new station, officers and employees will have a fenced area, watched by security-cameras, where employees and their vehicles can be protected. At the old station, police cars parked on the street or open parking lot. Once, a police car was set afire by vandals.

The police space in the old downtown station also will be remodeled, with offices for the Union Colony Fire/Rescue Authority and courtrooms for the Greeley Municipal Court.

This is cache, read story here