AVON — When it opens later this month, the city’s new $5.2 million police station will mean officers will finally have a little bit of room to breathe.

Moving day is May 22, and the trek to their new home will be only about three blocks. But the new 15,000-square-foot station near the corner of state Route 83 and Detroit Road, is roughly three times bigger than the old one.

“We’ve outgrown our building,” Capt. Rick Bosley said. “We’ve been stuffed in there with no room to work and no room to grow.”

The current station, 36774 Detroit Road, was City Hall until 1999, when those offices moved to Chester Road. The police, who had been operating in the basement, took over both floors but were still crammed elbow-to-elbow, Bosley said.

The Avon force has grown in the past decade from nine to 30 police officers, with seven dispatchers and an administrative assistant, he said.

And each year, about 1,000 new residential housing permits are taken out. Bosley said that trend has dipped a little as foreclosures have jumped in the past year or two, but Avon is still growing, and that means more police are needed.

At the rate new homes are springing up and businesses are opening, the department should be hiring another one or two officers a year, Bosley said — and that just wouldn’t have been realistic in the confines of the current station.

Construction was wrapping up Saturday as Bosley guided a tour through the new building at 36145 Detroit Road.

The station features a 12-hour jail with four holding cells and a detoxification room. About 12 prisoners can be held there.

Bosley said dispatchers will pull double duty as corrections officers at the jail, and five wall-mounted 46-inch LCD televisions will help them keep tabs on prisoners. Surveillance cameras mounted around the police station will also feed into the monitors, too, and a camera high atop a radio tower will give them a view over the nearby highway intersection.

Just inside the main lobby sits an 8-foot by 6-foot “safe room.” Bosley said the chamber was inspired by one at the Bay Village police station, where people fleeing domestic disputes, physical abuse or road ragers can walk into the police station and lock themselves in the room for protection.

“They feel like they’re being followed or stalked, they can come in here and slam the door,” Bosley said. “It locks automatically from the outside.”

Around the corner is an office for the Avon High Tech Crime Unit, run by Officer Larry Miller.

Miller has been running an online sting operation since 2005 to catch sexual predators. So far he’s collared 24 people trying to solicit sex from children on the Internet.

Avon’s two detectives have a huge new workspace now, too, with room to expand to four detectives. A training room in the station seats 40 and will also be used for community programs and safety lectures. It will also be used to host students on school field trips — Avon Mayor Jim Smith said those kinds of visits could soon be an all-day affair because eventually the city police station, fire station, post office and city hall will all be on the same grounds.

Outside, a 5,000-square-foot detached garage has enough space for 11 or 12 police cruisers along with an armory.

Bosley said the old police station has less floor space than the garage alone.

Avon police Lt. Keith Haag said emergency coverage won’t be interrupted during the move to the new station.

Requests for records and vehicle releases will be handled at the old station from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. until May 23. For all other police help, the old station will close 7 p.m. May 22, when the new station officially opens.

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

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