City council approves land purchase for new service center
The Columbia City Council approved the purchase of eight acres of land in north Columbia for a service center, including a new police station.
The city will spend more than $484,000 to buy the land from The Callaway Bank at the corner of Rangeline Street and International Drive for a municipal service center. Voters approved spending money from the quarter-cent capital improvement sales tax renewed in August on the service center – a total bill of $9.6 million. Gary Meyerpeter, president of The Callaway Bank’s Boone County market, said the business donated a third of the land to the city for the project, and discounted the other portion.
The purchase comes in the midst of several shooting incidents in the Auburn Hills area of north Columbia the service center will go. Since January 19, three shots fired incidents occurred just several blocks away from the location – including Bodie Drive, Currituck Lane and Tide Water Drive.
“If I could put a police station anywhere on the planet Earth, it would be right there,” Second Ward Councilman Michael Trapp, who represents that area, said at the meeting.
Karl Skala, who represents the nearby Third Ward, said the service center could solve some of the police response time and crime issues that persist in their wards.
“We need to make sure we have this distributed function, not just for police, but for a lot of other reasons in this center, if you will,” Skala said. “And it will dramatically cut down the response times both for the Second Ward and the Third Ward.”
The money from the capital improvement sales tax is specifically earmarked for the project. Skala said the council could not spend the money on hiring more officers.
“As much as I would like to hire more police officers, and we’re going to have to come up with a solution for that, but this is a solution in terms of capital improvements and efficiencies,” Skala said. “And I’m glad to see this and very happy to support it.”
The city will next need to design the service center later this year. Construction is set to start as early as mid-2017.
