Police Station redesign improves service and engagement

The East Peoria Police Department outgrew its small and outdated space, so City officials hired Fehr Graham to design a two-story 38,000-square-foot Police Station at 500 West Camp Street. The Police Department's visibility and response times will improve because the new building is near the centralized Levee District. It will also have a dedicated crime lab, larger evidence room, storm shelter and community space, improving the department's daily and emergency functions and its connection with the East Peoria community.

Fehr Graham collaborated with subconsultants – FGM Architects provided architectural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing, fire protection, security system and audio-visual services, and River City Construction was the contractor.

The Fehr Graham team worked on the project in phases. The initial design phase indicated that the project was exceeding budget. We made modifications while maximizing function and preserving integrity. We reduced the building's square footage to optimize space and replaced the plan for steel-braced frames with precast concrete shear walls to simplify construction and minimize cost. We also eliminated a large parking enclosure and instead designed an exterior parking area. After completing the schematic design and development phases, we started construction documents, bidding and negotiation, and construction administration.

The building's structure contains industrial steel, precast concrete, concrete masonry units (CMUs) and cast-in-place concrete elements. Steel-braced frames, precast concrete shear walls, CMU bearing walls and steel moment frames protect the building from wind and seismic forces. The construction site has poor soil conditions (Site Class E). Police stations are essential facilities, so they must be built so they can serve as shelters during natural disasters. Because the soil has high seismic risk, our team needed to design the foundation with aggregate piers so the building could withstand an earthquake or tornado.

The project's distinct features include a storm shelter constructed with reinforced CMU walls and a precast concrete roof designed to meet Federal Emergency Management Agency and International Code Council 500 standards to withstand a seismic event. A prominent feature wall is a key element of the overall architectural design.