By Tim Eberly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Construction workers don’t confuse Atlanta police Lt. Jeff Glazier for one of them. His hard hat has some police pizazz: It’s blue and has the Police Department’s logo on the front.
“A lot of these guys ask me for my police hat when I go through,” Glazier said. “They say they want to trade. But I haven’t found a hat that I like more.”
Glazier is a 15-year Atlanta police veteran, but for the past three years he’s spent all his time dealing with architects, blueprints and construction companies rather than burglary suspects and stolen cars.
Glazier is the police official in charge of the New Headquarters Project --- the department’s move from Ponce de Leon Avenue to a brand new building in downtown Atlanta.
The $90 million project is about to go into high gear: Atlanta police are slated to begin moving in September, leaving behind the massive edifice dubbed City Hall East that never quite felt like home.
“City Hall East was never designed to be a police headquarters. It’s a Sears warehouse,” Glazier said, referring to the 1926 building’s origins as a Sears, Roebuck store and distribution center. “This is the first time we’ve been given the opportunity to design our own space that works for us.”
The new building, on Garnett Street near Peachtree Street, borders the Atlanta City Jail and the Atlanta Municipal Court and is just blocks from the Fulton County Courthouse.
“The detectives can walk to court, and the command staff can walk to City Hall,” Glazier said.
Named the Atlanta Public Safety Headquarters, it’s a five-story brick structure with a five-floor parking garage on a 3 1/2-acre site. The Atlanta Fire Department has dibs on the first floor, and the Police Department claims the other four.
“Most people are feeling good about it. It’s almost like moving into a new house,” said Sgt. Lisa Keyes, a department spokeswoman. “This is a place where you spent more than eight hours of your day. They’re ready to get into a new space, a new work environment.”
The building has 165,000 square feet, much smaller than the nearly 2 million square feet that is City Hall East, the department’s headquarters since the early 1990s that is to be redeveloped for condominiums and commercial space.
“As much as we complain about City Hall East, it’s impossible to replicate the space we have there,” Glazier said. “I think that’s going to be a little bit of a culture shock for people.”
Some officers will have to trade their large offices for small ones; others will move from small offices to cubicles. Still, Glazier said, the department will have enough room. The Police Department never occupied more than 20 percent --- about 200,000 square feet --- of City Hall East.
Atlanta police initially wanted the new headquarters to be 200,000 square feet, but the city couldn’t afford it. Glazier had other ideas --- such as a day-care center for employees’ children --- that didn’t pan out, either.
“In the end, there’s a price tag for everything,” Glazier said. “This is not the Taj Mahal. This is not even the Ritz Carlton. This is a clean, comfortable Holiday Inn.”
It may not be glamorous, but the new building will have more natural light than the old one, Glazier said. There also will be different entrances for the public, employees and crime suspects, as opposed to City Hall East, where there’s only one set of elevators.
The new headquarters sports some other features that City Hall East does not --- a fitness room with showers and lockers, a helicopter pad on the roof of the parking garage, and a public safety memorial for officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty.
Atlanta police have two other components of the move, paid for by a $50 million sale of municipal bonds, the $33 million sale of City Hall East and the sale of the city’s old traffic court building, Glazier said.
The city’s 911 call center will relocate to an undisclosed location. Police also purchased property on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway in northwest Atlanta and will construct a three-story building there for the records, identification and license and permits units. A 100,000-square-foot warehouse on that site will become a new home for evidence and property seized by the police.
Police hope to break ground on the Hollowell building this month, and it will take a year to build, Glazier said. Employees who will work there won’t move from City Hall East until June 2009.
Until then, the department has much housecleaning to do in its old building.
It has about 35,000 square feet filled with seized evidence and property --- about 75 percent of which needs to be tossed out. Police recruits are helping sort it all out, “from one hit of crack cocaine to slot machines to a roll of copper wire,” Glazier said.
Glazier said he misses the action of being on the street, but he jumped at the chance to lead the project.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Glazier said. “Every time you drive by, you can look at it and say, ‘I was part of that.’ ”
He’ll also know all the secrets that lie within the walls of the department’s new home.
“I know where all the mistakes are,” Glazier said. “But until someone points it out, it’s not a mistake. And I’m not giving any out.”
Copyright 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution