Size and cost projections for new police station trimmed once again

The first meeting of Wilmette’s Village Board in 2025 focused solely on a project that will surely be one of trustees’ most thought-over endeavors in the year ahead.

A special Committee of the Whole meeting of the board on Tuesday, Jan. 14, zeroed in on reaching tentative approval of the recommended building program for Wilmette’s new police station.

Trustees ultimately reached a formal consensus to give the green-light to the program following a detailed presentation from Village Manager Michael Braiman that concentrated on updates to the initial plan for spaces throughout the new building.

The board’s stamp of approval came during its regular meeting — which immediately followed the COW session on Jan. 14 — after discussions carried past the earmarked one-hour time.

Tentative approval of the building program now allows FGM Architects, the firm leading schematic design services for the large-scale project, to “develop and finalize site plan concepts,” according to a village memo from Braiman.

Additionally, the direction from the board to move forward provides FGM officials with size constraints for the building to guide their site plan and concepts, Braiman said, adding that those plans will help demonstrate the impact of the recommended building programs on Howard Park.

In prior public meetings discussing the project, some residents raised concerns about a rebuilt facility encroaching on Howard Park.

Village officials alongside FGM representatives have worked since November to reduce several components of the project as well as the overall size of the proposed building, per village documents.

Through this, the net building size was further reduced by 10% and the estimated cost was dropped by $3.6 million from the latest estimate.

The current size recommendation is 49,839 square feet, down from the initial space needs projection of 61,275 square feet, and for a total project cost of $47.8 million versus the $52.9-$55 million range that was first projected early in the process.

“We’re hearing the feedback, we’re hearing the questions from the board and from the community,” Braiman said. “We’re reviewing those and we’re making adjustments as appropriate without compromising the efficiency or the effectiveness of the building and we think we’ve made some positive changes to the building program.”

Part of Braiman’s presentation included a review of spaces that are part of the size reduction.

One of the biggest changes is the space allocated to vehicle parking and storage, where plans were reduced by nearly 2,000 square feet. To make that shift, both the amount of visitor and indoor parking spaces were reduced.

Transitioning communications to Glenview, as reported by The Record, also resulted in significant space savings.

Village officials are hopeful to have a “tighter” budget update for the project by March, per Braiman, who noted that “there is a lot of work that is going to be done over the next 30 days.”

Wilmette will host an open house at the police station later this month on Jan. 30 where officials will present various site plans to the community.

As part of that, the village hopes to gather feedback from residents that can then be brought back to the Village Board for its Feb. 11 meeting. Trustees are then slated to review the site plans in more detail during the session.

Additionally, Wilmette’s Appearance Review Commission will have what was described as a “visioning session” with FGM on Feb. 3 for a preliminary review of building materials.

While trustees reached a general consensus on providing staff with direction to move forward with the tentative building program, board members also stated the importance of one of the next key steps in the process: seeing site plans for the facility.

“I agreed with everything that is laid out here but that is really easy to say tonight without seeing it on the site plan,” Trustee Kathy Dodd said, later adding, “While I think we are where we need to be, the hard decision is going to come as we get to the point of the site plan and so I just want to state that I want to have the flexibility to reevaluate something that we feel we think is the right thing tonight once we actually see the site plan.”

Trustee Kate Gjaja, who is the chair of the public safety committee, said she feels the process so far “has been a good one,” but noted that she also believes the board does still have “quite a bit of work to do.”

“I think from my perspective we need to keep moving forward with the information that we have,” she said. “There is nothing that I have seen or been presented with tonight that I think calls a halt to where we are in this process. We need more information. We need to keep seeing what this looks like on the site. … But I am in favor of moving this forward to the next step and continuing to work this process.”

Trustee Stephen Leonard, who noted he’s a strong proponent of the police station project, did highlight some concerns about the recent reductions.

“As I go through the reductions that we made in this memo, I know there’s a lot of hard work that went into this, but I’m concerned,” he said. “I’m concerned that we may have cut a little bit too deeply here.”

“If we try to economize too far, we will inevitably regret it on certain levels and I just don’t want to be in that position,” Leonard later added.

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