The Armory on Northampton and 7th Streets
Posted by: Noel Jones
I have heard from a chain of what have previously been reliable sources that the City is in the process of applying for a grant with which to purchase the old armory on Northampton and 7th Street to turn it into a police station. Being as this is a blog, and not a news agency, regardless of whether or not this report is accurate, I am more interested in knowing whether or not West Ward residents think it would be a good idea in this hypothetical situation, and if not, what they would rather see there, and why.
Here are some arguments for, and against that I have gathered from asking around, and I would like to hear other pros and cons that may not be listed here:
For: 1. Our police officers currently don't have a real police department, and they really need one. 2. Nothing has been done with the armory for years, which has stood empty and blighted on the main street in the center of our neighborhood, making the neighborhood look bad and discouraging potential home-buyers year after year, so anything would be better than having it continue to sit abandoned. 3. It might reduce prostitution and open-air drug dealing on Northampton Street.
Against: 1. Police stations have not been proven to reduce crime in the neighborhoods where they have been established. 2. Having a police station on our main street in such a highly visible location is a deterrent to potential home-buyers and would re-inforce the stigma that West Ward already has for holding the County's criminals, first the jail, then the juvenile detention center, now a police station. 3. Some feel that what should go into such a visible building is a business that attracts commerce to the area and pays property taxes into our tax base. A grocery store is one popular suggestion.
I have emailed Mayor Panto and Gretchen Lippincott, Director of Community and Economic Development, to ask for confirmation. I'll let you know when I hear from them (unless they post directly to the blog).
Please post your opinions here.
Yours,
Noel Jones
Neighbors of Easton
Posts
20 comments:
Mayor Panto has got back to me on this and confirmed that the City is applying for a grant and that the armory is one of the properties being considered for a new police station, but says that a location will not be selected without public input, so lets hear your comments!
Where will they park their vehicles? Around the Fort? Will they be marching perps in and out? At five points? In front of the bus stops? Interesting possible visual juxtapositions of the old and the new!
Hope they have some other good options! And that, in their back pockets, as per the request of this community, they have a written grant for a green market or a grocery store so to stimulate our West Ward economy because, please advise - is this grant connected in any way to the Stimulus Package?
the armory is a MAJOR eyesore, as is the wholesale grocers across the street (Who I believe own it now). they could build a sweet parking deck next to the castle, it could look real good. and if they can get a Federal grant, great. Easton loves grants.
nobody has tried to put a business in that building for many years; even when it was a KOZ (keystone opportunity zone for those that don't know) there weren't any takers. so, if you couldn't get any takers in a better economy when they wouldn't have had to pay taxes on it, what is the likelihood you'll get someone NOW?
I think a police station is the best idea yet (and it's closer for me to go pay parking tickets!)
I have never seen a sweet parking deck. I like the station where it is - centrally located but discreet not impinging on the mood of the street, entry on a diagonal but near the bus station and City Hall. Would like to know what is wrong with where they are - and what would it take to make the necessary improvments to where they are. What does their accreditation evaluation say about the space they are in now and if the accreditors had recommendations. If they can get away with improving where they are that would be best. We are paying alot of money as a result of the behavior of the Easton Police Department. They absolutely should have what they need but no more. If there is a grant for the police what about putting it towards Community Policing? Or hiring more officers?
I'm going to be posting seperately on this tonight...give me until midnight or so to get something together.
DRL
I want to acknowledge that Easton has a mayor who attends to a neighborhood blog on a Saturday night. People should move here.
Mayor, thank you for that response. Still, I wouldnt want the police station at the Armory. There was a study done more than several years ago and I don't remember the exact name of it but you will know. It concluded that Easton's best asset was its very viable housing stock existing in the West Ward and South Side and that this should be the leverage point for the town's revitalization - market that housing, build up the tax base. To me that means every decision with respect to changes in the West Ward and South Side should be considered with respect to how it would affect residential marketing. True, we have the County not thinking from this perspective - but many of us, in the recent past, have moved here and stayed here anyway. And if we could take advantage of the window of opportunity provided by the fact that we have a reasonable and progressive thinking County Executive, John Stoffa, we may be able to improve our relationship with the County and get some improvements to the prison and the surrounding neighborhood.
I second Cathy on this one--it is very cool that our mayor participates in conversations with the public via a blog and on the weekend! In what other city can people do that?
A police station is not the kind of building to begin a renaissance for the west ward. They are the most horrible of designs a la Hill Street Blues. They are urban pill boxes with barb wire that are more appropriate for the Maginot Line. For those who were not here, the parking garage space now occupied by the police department was beautiful commercial retail space with huge windows. The windows came out, the brick went in with tiny slits for air and light. That is the typical urban design. Besides the building is useless because there are no employees to receive you before 8 or after 5. It belongs at the end of a street or in the back.
Anonymous' description of the police station architecture is accurate. Unfortunately, we are not living through the City Beautifaul Moveement of the 1880's to 1910's when public buildings were considered worthy of architectural ornament and instilled with a sense of public grace and honor. We are lucky to get them built on time and on budget with minimal (and often inappropriate)aesthetic detail.
I also believe the point of diminishing returns has been reached with the size of the police force. Any further workforce expansion should be focused on code enforcement...and finely focused at that. If we could cut off at the knees the code problems we have with many property owners and tenants it would go a long way towards eliminating criminal problems (and the associated incarceration costs) before they start.
We need a pow-wow with the city before the next code administartor is hired to determine the core issues and how to make the most of enforcement man hours. No matter how many times I hear about what we can and can't do, it just doesn't sit right with me that we aren't making more progress. I'd love a focused citizen/city task force to zero in on this...like we did with the zoning ordinance.
DRL
I thought the city had some real financial issues coming in the future. I don't understand this thought that we should discard buildings and get new ones.
Anon@10:07,
Which buildings are you referring to that we are getting rid of?
DRL
I couldn't imagine a least-likely building to house a brand new modern well-functioning and growing police department!
A new facility should be downtown, as it is now, on some of the vast tracts of vacant land behind the proposed new transportation center, since much of the crime passes through Easton from out of town.
Or on the vacant land created when the existing parking garage is demolished. Vacant land would provide the flexibility of design, people and vehicle circulation needed to support a busy police department, without destroying the integrity of a monumentally ill-suited (and monumental) historic treasure such as the Armory.
What a massive waste of a valuable historic site that would be!
We were very glad to see the police department leave the West Ward when City Hall was demolished.
The quality of our life has improved enormously since. Please don't plunk it back here where so many people actually live!
DRL,
The parking garage which Tim Hare refers to in his post. I did not know that the city was intending to demolish it until recently. The mayor mentioned it in a news conference.
I had been following this thread, but now notice the absence of the mayor's comments. Does anyone know what happened?
I am echoing Anon 12:54--what happened to the mayor's comments? The thought maybe I had remembered wrong and that his comments were on the other "Armory" post, but it was definitely this post, because Cathy and I both commented in response to his comment.
What happened?
Sal Panto says:
I have no idea what happened to my response. I didn't delete it and frankly i don't know how to delete it.
Let me finalize by saying what I said before. The armory was one of several that were evaluated by the former administration. And yes we looked at iot from a development point of view as well as from a neighborhood revitalization aspect for a poorly maintained but valuable historic structure.
Modern police needs really places this tract at the bottom of the list due to cost of rehabilitation into a modern police department.
Modern departments that meet accreditation standards require certain aspects that this building doesn't have. A good example a good interior layout is the new Forks Police Department although I would want a much more urban exterior. But the space allocation, the way prisoners are handled (and use of audio video) id really well laid out. I believe this is what Tim Hare was alluding to in his comments.
So, the armory has many things going against it as a police station but certainly has much value to the city.
I know the WWNP wants to place one of the community garden greenhouses on the property because of its close proximity to the two nursery schools. As Chairperson of the Steering Committee I voiced my opposition to this at the meeting. I don't think we should do anything until the owner brings the building into code compliance just as a vacant structure.
Just today we will be citing the owner for the horrendous sidewalks and to board up the envelope (building structure). We understand there is no use of the building but if the elements continue to get inside we may lose the building. We are doing the same thing with the Mt. Vernon Hotel.
Property owners must adhere to the building codes standards for vacant properties. Now that we are beyond the Hub Cap Store we will be concentrating on the many blighted vacant properties throughout our city.
But as we have come to learn with the Hub Cap Store......the process can be s-l-o-w.
Thank you all for your comments and opinions here, I do enjoy reading all of them and do take them into consideration as we deliberate the various issues and challenges we face as a city, a neighborhood and as individuals.
Didnt know that detail of you opposing the greenhouse placement due to code violations and appreciate your opposition for those reasons. The safety of the children comes first. I have been banging the drum to create some safe green space area where those children can have outdoor time which is a regulatory requirement and is met by them walking around in a bunch on Northampton street. The teachers and managers of those daycares have visited and evaluated Dutchtown park which does have a green lawn but there are other safety issues with respect to the adjacent parking areas not being properly bounded. So that led to the positive aspect of the greenhouse nearby as the children will be planting seeds in the Spring. What is the status of the playground near the public housing. Wasnt it recently closed? Could the green house go there? or what steps need to happen to put boundaries around Dutchtown Park. This is a whole other thread I guess to be taken up elsewhere. This armory question has led us into alot of talk about green. But now I am hearing the snow...
Anon@6:53,
The demolition of the existing garage I believe is phase one of repurposing that lot for higher use development. I do not know whether more parking on that site is part of the repurposing or whether I'd be in favor of it.
I do know that protecting valuable, architecturally significant structures is the best thing we can do to become a sustainable city. This goes well beyond the typical stance of "historic preservation" and takes into account the tremendous amount of embodied energy: The energy it took to manufacture the materials used in buildings, transport them to the construction site, and construct the building has already been spent and is embodied in the building itself.
Tearing it down would mean all that energy would be lost to a landfill and all kinds of new energy would need to be expended in the production, transportaion and assembly of a new building.
Hopefully, Easton will begin to see an opportunity in this process and devise new ways to resell, reuse or recycle components of buildings we demolish. Having said all that, I favor removal of the garage. As an exposed structure, it suffers from the wrath of the weather and the constant dynamic forces of moving vehicles. It is structurally sub-standard now, has little architectural merit, is configured poorly in the way it meets the street and wastes valuable ground floor real estate that doesn't generate revenue. These things could be remedied in the existing structure but for a price that may not return the best value.
I am ready and willing to start brainstorming the possibilities for it's replacement.
DRL
I am looking at this purely from a financial standpoint. The garage should be paid for and it provides several hundred thousand dollars in revenues. No doubt, like so many other public structures, it is not perfect, but I am looking for a reason beyond aesthetics and efficiency of why the building should be razed. If there are none, then we need to concentrate on some other need in the community.
Mayor Panto--thanks for re-posting your comments--I am out of town and was meaning to email you to ask you to re-post. Thanks for the additional information as well. I think that while administrations can often feel that controlling/withholding information from the public ensures a more streamlined process, as evidenced with the long drawn out and ultimately wasteful and unsuccessful process with Riverwalk, it actually pays to give the public as much information as possible so that they are weighing the same info that the administration is. In the end, people tend to understand the pros and cons and can have a balanced debate that is not polarized when all information is on the table and everyone understands all elements at play.
There is clearly a lot to consider on this issue, and this discussion helps us understand all possibilities and challenges.
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