After Years of Delays, Fla. Police Department Moves into New $165M Headquarters
What to Know
- Fort Lauderdale police officials celebrated the opening of a new $165 million headquarters, replacing a deteriorating 1958 building plagued by leaks, flooding, unreliable elevators and other long-standing maintenance problems.
- The project faced years of delays, rising costs and construction challenges, including a structural design flaw discovered during construction, but city leaders said the finished facility will serve the department and community for decades.
- The new three-story headquarters includes a modern crime lab, digital forensics capabilities, onsite training facilities, a gun range, community space and hurricane-resistant construction designed to support modern policing needs.
But then came the pandemic and a host of other issues that complicated construction and raised costs. Inflation and increased labor and construction costs raised the price to $140 million by the time workers broke ground in 2023. During construction in 2024, a major design flaw was discovered: hairline cracks began forming along the entire length of a support beam on the top floor, which have since been fixed, the Sun Sentinel reported. That added up to the final total of $165 million.
“Projects of this magnitude are complicated,” said Mayor Dean Trantalis. “They span years, they cross commissions and administrations. They require difficult decisions, constant coordination, and a lot of people who refuse to let the work stop when challenges arise.”
Completing the new headquarters was a labor of love, said Anthony Fajardo, the city development services department director.
“The design is just gorgeous, and we’re very proud of it. I’d be lying if I said it was easy, but with solid leadership, hard work and a lot of patience, I can’t express that enough, a lot of patience, we now have a safe building that supports the city’s needs for decades to come,” Fajardo said at the event. “Having said that, if you took a picture of me in 2022, I don’t look four years older. I look 10 years older.”
During the rainy morning, officers showed off the three-story headquarters’ bells and whistles as neighborhood ducks waddled through the parking garage and splashed in puddles. Donated murals decorate one hallway, including a painting of law enforcement and first responders helping people and another dedicated to the SWAT unit made of bullets. Chief Schultz surprised officers by hanging up a sign from the 1958 building in the new one: “Thru this door walk the finest police officers in the world.”
The building, designed to withstand a category five hurricane, offers an open-air courtyard, community center and a state-of-the-art crime scene investigations lab, which one officer joked looks like “CSI Miami.”
In the lab, there are “drying” rooms used to safely air-dry evidence like bloody clothes and handguns, a large garage where cars from crime scenes can be rolled into and a digital forensics unit. Police keep devices like cell phones and laptops in the “Faraday room,” a small metal room with virtually no cell signal or WiFi, which prevents someone from remotely wiping evidence from devices.
Officers can now train onsite, something they had to outsource in the last few years at the previous building. Now, officers can enjoy the convenience of the new headquarters’ training facilities, including an armory and a 50-yard gun range with shooting targets that can move around and enough space to bring in cars to train for different scenarios.
“Every part of this building reflects how much law enforcement has evolved,” said Commissioner Steven Glassman.
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