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Staff writer

In its over 150-year history, the main functions of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office have never been under one roof.

The 135,000 square-foot public safety building in Andover encompasses all aspects of public safety response and investigation. The 144 staff members are tentatively planning to move to the new facility on Dec. 9 and Dec. 10, according to Capt. James Stuart.

An open house date has not been scheduled, but could happen next spring, Stuart said.

Located on the east side of Hanson Boulevard and just south of Bunker Lake Boulevard, the facility will house administrative and support staff offices, the patrol station, crime labs, speciality vehicles and squad cars, a training room, conference room, fitness area, men’s and women’s lockers, evidence storage and a few short-term holding cells.

Stuart said there are many benefits to having all operations at one location. Staff will be able to walk down the hall to ask questions. Coordination of meetings should be more efficient. Support staff resources could also be shared so there is no duplication of efforts.

“Operationally across the board this is going to be a radical improvement in operations for us and it’s just going to be a real exciting time as we step forward into the future of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office,” Stuart said.

The project is coming in on budget. The preliminary construction estimate was $20.875 million, according to Stuart.

The new building will be fully furnished with new desks, chairs and tables and a lot of new equipment. These costs along with other soft costs such as architectural and engineering, added over $6 million.

The entire project cost is $27,516,750, according to Stuart.

Stahl Construction was the general contractor. According to Gary Maciejny, field superintendent, between 40 and 45 subcontractors worked on this project. At the height of construction, there were over 100 people working on-site.

Maciejny lives just down the road in Coon Rapids from the public safety building and feels very fortunate that his company was able to work on this project.

Maciejny said it would have been painful going by and seeing the project unfold if his company had not won the contract bid.

“It’s been great to be working in your own community this close. To be able to drive by for years and years to see it and know that you built it, it was nice,” Maciejny said.

Since this project started, Stuart has been in charge of supervising its progress. From the time the project was conceived until now, Stuart said watching the building develop during construction was his favorite time.

“You can do a full walk-through on a Monday and come back on Wednesday and there’s so many radical changes throughout the facility during the building process because they really worked very efficiently and there’s just been some great crews here working and getting things done,” Stuart said.

Tri-county crime lab

The new public safety campus is more than a new home for Anoka County crime fighters. Sherburne and Wright counties and Hamline University students will also benefit.

Anoka County Sheriff’s Office employees will staff the tri-county regional crime lab and the three counties will share a percentage of operational costs based on its populations, Stuart said. Staff from Sherburne and Wright counties may come in for training, he noted.

The regional crime lab will eventually be able to analyze DNA evidence when DNA scientists are hired sometime next year, Stuart said.

Students from Hamline University will have opportunities to learn from professionals through an internship program or classes which could be held on-site or through video conferences.

Of the total 135,000 square-foot building, about 20 percent is unfinished space, according to Stuart.

The crime lab is one area that could be expanded in the future. The whole crime lab is 23,000 square-feet, but some of this is unfinished space. As fast as technology is growing in this “CSI” culture, Stuart said they don’t know five or 10 years from now what the expectations or capabilities will be.

Touring the facility

With some crimes being caught on video, there can be a lot of video evidence to analyze. There is space dedicated to video forensic analysis in the new building.

If there was ever a natural or man-made disaster in the area, the new sheriff’s office building could be used as the emergency operations center. Stuart said a computer training room is configured so 15 to 20 lap tops and phones could be hooked up if necessary.

The large community room on the ground floor could hold functions for the general public or be divided with temporary walls for smaller training classes that all have projector hook-ups.

The vision of the sheriff’s office is this facility would become a regional hub for training. Instead of paying the entry fees and travel expenses of a limited number of people who would then train others back home, several more people could be trained at the same time at or below what it would usually cost, Stuart said.

The squad car garage has a work space area for technical staff to update software on squad car laptops when it is needed. There is also the possibility of having an area of the garage be used for the repair of squad cars.

Just outside the squad car garage is a locker area where officers can store equipment instead of having to bring it home with them at the end of the work day.

Some of the specialty vehicles such as SWAT vehicles were stored outside the patrol station because of limited indoor parking space. Stuart said the problem with this set-up was if there was a stand-off during the winter and a SWAT team was needed, the vehicles would have to be moved indoors and the ice and snow would be scrapped off while the vehicles warmed up and the equipment was loaded.

With there being much more indoor parking space for these vehicles at the new facility, SWAT team members would be able to quickly grab their equipment and go no matter what time of the year it is. The dive team boats will also have indoor space.

One entire room is dedicated to hard drive storage.

A use of force training room gives officers in the department a convenient location to brush up on techniques and a fitness area with weights and treadmills will make give officers a convenient space to stay in shape.

Throughout the building, large windows can be seen at the front entrance of the building, the crime lab and offices.

Stuart said allowing as much natural light in as possible was part of the state’s requirement to make the building as energy friendly as possible. All lighting systems have sensors so the more natural light there is, the less electricity the lights will use.

Future of old space

It is still unknown what will happen to the old sheriff’s office space in the Anoka County Government Center in Anoka and the old patrol station just north of the new public safety building in Andover.

Stuart said court security will still have office space in the government center and the Anoka County Jail is not going anywhere, but there would be additional space available beyond these uses.

There are a lot of ideas, but nothing has been finalized, said Andrew Dykstra, director of facilities management and construction for Anoka County.

Having a county sign shop at the old patrol station was a concept at one point, but this idea has been abandoned, Dykstra said.

Eric Hagen is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it