Community: Grosse Pointe City
Population: 2,500-9,999
Public safety training, intergovernmental cooperation, and equipment sharing are hot topics that are often discussed, but rarely put into action. The opening of the new Public Safety building in Grosse Pointe City presented a chance to put those terms to work.
The City’s design team worked on concepts that would streamline response time, improve safety, allow for shared police and fire training, and create a space for public safety personnel and citizens to collaborate. The new building, which was years in the planning and funded by a voter approved bond, opened in August of 2020. It has already served as a location for a joint police task force, the starting point for a collaborative crisis response team for safer engagement with people in mental health crisis, and training site for police and fire personnel from the mutual aid pact members.
The building features a training room for in house-training or community meetings, an added apparatus bay to accommodate fire equipment sharing, fire training tower, and virtual police simulator for real life scenarios. The facility also incorporates sufficient workspace for detectives from multiple communities to work cases or form major crime task forces. All the Grosse Pointes and Harper Woods have joined in a special intergovernmental agreement to take part in the new training opportunities.
Replicability:
The design of the new building is brick and stone, fitting a Grosse Pointe Tudor aesthetic. The design also incorporates the latest employee satisfaction and wellness attributes; including a fitness center with mat room, break room with full kitchen, mothering room, and firefighter decontamination area separated from the regular locker rooms. A quick walk through or look at the plans can show other municipalities how to incorporate these start of the art features while maximizing space.
Creativity and Originality:
The City of Grosse Pointe is geographically in the center of five Grosse Pointes municipalities and the City of Harper Woods that are all within the same mutual aid group. One of the key objectives of the project was to enhance the effectiveness of the public safety support system for these communities on the eastside of Wayne County through added functionality and increased cooperation. This facility allows those agencies to train jointly or independently without interfering with the daily operations of Grosse Pointe City personnel, while serving as a model for other agencies looking to recruit and retain employees with the newest workplace amenities.
Community Impact:
The building is an attractive new multimillion dollar investment on Mack Avenue, a commercial corridor shared with the City of Detroit. As anticipated, the new public safety center on that major commercial corridor has already led to new business confidence enabling business startups and new private reinvestment spurring revitalization on both the Grosse Pointe and Detroit sides of Mack. The visible element of having the public safety center on Mack has lead to a renewed sense of safety and community engagement.
