The City of Fort Lauderdale unveiled its new police headquarters at a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday morning. The building made its debut after a series of setbacks and replaces the previous headquarters built in 1958.
“ How many of you had ever gone to the original police department headquarters?” Anthony Fajardo, the city’s development services director, asked the crowd. “I thought I needed a tetanus shot when I left that building. It was very rough, and the people who worked there deserved much better than what they were getting,”
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The city heard years of complaints about the old building, from broken A/C systems to elevators malfunctioning to leaky roofs. Now Fort Lauderdale Police have a state-of-the-art building. The three-story structure is 191,000 square feet and includes a 200,000 square foot parking garage to serve the departments 500 sworn officers and 300 civilian employees. The facility is also equipped with a real time crime center, a forensics lab, and a community center.
“The significance of this facility is not measured in square feet. It is measured by what it allows the extraordinary men and women of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department to do,” said Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Steve Glassman.
The site also includes a “Faraday room” for digital forensic investigations. The room blocks electromagnetic frequencies from entering or leaving the room, allowing investigators to securely search electronic devices for evidence.
“ Our goal is to prevent any type of remote wiping of the cell phones as well to preserve any evidence that might be on the phone if the phone is locked out or it's password-protected,” said Raymond Ketchmark, of the department's digital forensics unit.
Officers say the building's new gun range is a also boon for the department. Officers said the range in the previous headquarters was often broken down and that “stuff just didn’t work.” The new range includes dedicated weapon storage and cleaning areas, and has an entry way large enough for a full-sized SUV should the officers need training firing from a vehicle. Previously, the department was outsourcing much of its training due to the limitations of its previous facility.
One part of the old headquarters still exists inside the new building. The night before the ribbon cutting, Police Chief Bill Schultz sunk in a sign that used to hang over the entryway into the old building and surprised his officers by installing it inside the new building. The sign reads "Thru this door walk the finest police officers in the world."
Project Setbacks
The project began in 2019 when voters approved a $100 million bond, but due to COVID-era construction cost increases and inflation that price tag rose to around $140 million when the project broke ground in 2023. The figure rose again in 2024 after the project was delayed after a design flaw caused a visible crack in a roof slab of the building’s northwest corner.
One year later a report by the engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. found eight safety issues that “warrant attention either as soon as possible or in the near term," and noted that the entire structure under construction was at risk.
At the time, Vice-Mayor Ben Sorensen called the report “very concerning.”
AECOM, the design firm for the project, agreed to pay for all of the fixes required. The final cost for the new building is around $165 million.
