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Wichita Police To Conduct Facility Study Before Building New East Station

Ark Valley Fire Buff
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The Wichita City Council approved plans Tuesday to study the police department’s needs as it prepares to build a new station.

The Wichita Police Department is planning to build a new facility to replace its aging Patrol East substation near Kellogg and Edgemoor. It was built in 1989 for about 40 people—now, 140 people work there, Chief Gordon Ramsay told council members.

The city’s Capital Improvement Program includes more than $2 million for a new facility. $125,000 of that will be used to first study how to design a modern police station.

“This is more a review of what our needs are as a police department in these stations," Ramsay said. "They’re not substations anymore. They’re working police stations.”

The funds will also go toward building a more secure entrance on the existing east station.

See the full proposal here.

Ramsay told council members that the building is too small and outdated for the work his department wants to do.

“Our philosophy is really working closer with the community," he said. "We want to have community rooms, we want to have room for volunteers, and it just doesn’t exist.”

Ramsay said the final design will also be used as a template for upgrades to the other three stations in the future.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.