Not quite four months ago, Huntersville Police Chief Phillip Potter sat in dejected silence in his traditional spot beside the town board dais as Commissioner Sarah McAulay, seated just a few feet away, quickly and quietly buried his long-planned vision for a new, much larger headquarters.

At the board’s second June meeting, McAulay drew the task of announcing that commissioners — aware of the region’s economic stagnation and even more concerned about the impact a failed referendum might have on future attempts to finance a station — would not place a bond referendum on November’s ballot to generate the estimated $15 to $20 million needed for construction of a new police department facility.

Monday night, from the same seat, Potter rose quickly to tell the board about the resurrection of his ambition and the new gleam in his eye. As he walked across the room with notes in hand, Mayor Jill Swain, well aware of the contents of Potter’s report, couldn’t contain herself.

“It’s amazing to me you’re not skipping to the podium,” Swain said to Potter.

As a general rule, police chiefs don’t skip, but you’ll have to excuse Potter if there was just a little more bounce than normal in his stride.

Potter’s presentation to the board and public reflected the details of a plan commissioners, Town Manager Greg Ferguson, Potter and local real estate agent Gary Knox had been dissecting for weeks in closed sessions: The purchase of a virtually unused, state-of-the-art building more than three times the size of the existing police station just a mile or so from the current Gilead Road headquarters for a fraction — one-third to be more accurate — of what it would cost to build a new facility.

The building, at 9630 Julian Clark Ave. in The Park Huntersville, is a 26,000-square-foot stone and glass structure custom-built for use as a alternative medicine center. As a surprising alternative for the town’s plans to build a new police station, the facility includes many of the characteristics, and interior design specifics, Potter had included in the specs for his envisioned station. And at $4.225 million, and a move-in date just months instead of years away, the deal had Potter and every other town representative at Monday’s meeting in a festive mood. “For me, it’s the highlight of my two years on the board,” Commissioner Danae Caulfied said.

“The chance to get this facility, in this location, at this price, is unbelievable,” said Commissioner Charles Jeter. “We need to give a lot of people credit for thinking and acting out of the box.”

Commissioners Ron Julian and McAulay as well as Swain also took the opportunity to gush about the pending acquisition of the new police station, a project that has been a town priority, but not high enough priority for immediate action, for years.

“This has been a top five goal for the board for at least three or four years,” Ferguson says, “and the board has actually pursued some specific sites in the past. The recession has been our biggest problem and some of the sites have not had unanimous support, but every member of the board is in the same place on this one.”

At Monday’s meeting, as part of the acquisition process, the board ratified the contract outlining terms for purchasing the building, approved the allocation of $25,000 from previous municipal bond sales as earnest money, and scheduled a public hearing at its Nov. 7 meeting to review details of the transaction and allow for public input. In short, the board did everything it could to expedite the proceedings and move toward a closing on the property before the end of the year.

The building

The two-story facility, with an artistic portico and originally featuring a waterfall flanked by reflecting pools at the main entrance, is located on a 2.8-acre tract on the south side of Julian Clark Avenue with quick access to McCoy Road and a short distance from Gilead.

The facility was owned by LKN Commercial Properties before being acquired by First Trust Bank in Charlotte through foreclosure proceedings in 2010. The most recent valuation from the Mecklenburg County Tax Office places the total assessment for the property at $3.869 million.

Potter said the building includes a variety of spaces that could be easily adapted for department use.

“There’s a conference room that would probably house about 125 people in a lecture setting and 50 or so at tables for classroom and workshop sessions” Potter says. “There’s a room upstairs that could serve as an evidence room and smaller rooms, which I guess were designed as examination rooms, that can be used for individual offices.”

He added that there are plenty of interview and interrogation spaces as well as room to grow as the department adds personnel in the future. Currently, the 82 sworn officers and nine other department staff members function out of the 8,000-square-foot facility near the intersection of Gilead and Old Statesville roads. Potter said having a facility more than three times larger than the current headquarters is a definite plus, but the new building’s assets include more than just added elbow room.

“At first, I had concerns that it would not be suitable for our needs,” Potter says, “but after I walked through the first time, I really could not find a reason it wouldn’t work. And as I looked at the different features of the building, I realized it was well laid out for our purposes.”

Potter added that the building is near the center of Huntersville’s population, has a separate rear entrance that could be easily adapted for prisoner transports and includes enough property, including a 100-space parking lot, for at least some expansion in the future.

“Currently, the building will meet our needs,” Potter says, “and it should be fine for at least the next five or seven years. We can consider this phase 1 and, if the need exists in the future, there’s space to add another 10,000 square feet or so.”

The process

At Monday’s meeting, McAulay drew much praise from fellow commissioners for pushing through the acquisition, but everyone involved also commended Knox for visualizing and connecting the dots between the empty office building and the town’s needs.

“My wife always asks me why I go to all these meetings and why I’m always reading about what’s going on in the towns,” said Knox, a principal in the Knox Group, “but I’ve been doing this for 26 years now and you have to know where the towns are going and what their needs are.”

Knox said Tuesday he had shown the building several times for the bank since the foreclosure and began thinking about the possibility of the facility as a police station in this past summer. He presented the idea to Ferguson who, after visiting the property, forwarded the concept to Potter.

“It’s really amazing when you look at the plans and details in the chief’s sketches for a new station and see how many of those specifics are already in place in this building,” Knox said. “It really matches many of the needs the police department had already established.”

At one of the late summer sessions with the board, Knox also brought in the contractors who built the structure to answer some of the commissioners’ questions. That meeting unveiled another positive aspect of the deal.

“It was custom-built and had a lot of extra features included so it was hard to estimate the original value,” Knox said, “but the contractors told the town representatives it was the most expensive building of its kind they had ever built.”

For Potter, the enormous increase in department space the building will provide, and the fact that the renovations required before the move is finalized will only take a few months, are pluses, but the overall nature of the deal still provides the most satisfaction.

“This is good for everybody,” Potter said Tuesday. “This is a capital improvement project and the original estimates for a new station were in the $14 million to $20 million range. With the refitting and changes requires, this will still come in under $6 million. That takes the burden off the taxpayers and, thanks to Greg Ferguson and Janet Stoner (the town’s finance director) we can put the financing together without a tax increase.

“It’s a really good thing,” Potter added, “in that it satisfies the police department’s need and provides value back to the citizens.”