The New York City Department of Design and Construction has filed plans for a Bjarke Ingels-designed police station in the South Bronx that’s expected to cost $50 million.
The three-story building will rise at 567 East 149th Street, on the border between Mott Haven and Melrose. The station house will serve the 40th Precinct, which has the city’s highest murder rate but the fewest detectives assigned to each violent crime.
The precinct will move out of its current home, a three-story, 1920s Renaissance Revival building at 257 Alexander Avenue, and into the new building between East 149th Street, and St Ann’s, Westchester and Brook avenues. The site is currently an empty, city-owned lot next to the abandoned Port Morris branch of the New York and Harlem Railroad. This particular stretch was known as a heroin shooting gallery and homeless encampment, which was cleared out a year and a half ago by the city.
The finished police station will reach 60 feet into the air and span 49,000 square feet. The plans include a maintenance shop, changing rooms and offices in the cellar, followed by a lobby and rooms for prisoner processing, battery, records, property, evidence, vehicles and barricade storage on the first floor. There will also be a community training/muster room and a community meeting room on the first floor. The second floor will have conference rooms and more storage and evidence rooms, and the third floor will host offices, changing rooms and an officer lounge.
It will be the first NYPD precinct to include a green roof and a community meeting room, which will have a separate entrance. There will also be a courtyard and training area with climbing walls. The interior will incorporate a three-story atrium, allowing total surveillance from the main desk, and channeling light into the building’s core.
The project has been in the works since 2008, when the city tapped Alexander Gorlin to design a more traditional station house. Since then, the cost of design and construction has nearly doubled from $29 million to $50 million, the Daily News reported last year. The design is meant to resemble a series of stacked bricks, and the exterior will be clad in sandblasted concrete and perforated metal panels, among other materials.
