Guilford police needs assessment tallies roughly $19.9M to renovate, $35.6M for a hypothetical new build

Police Chief Chris Massey told residents the department's building—about 30 years old—faces multiple deferred-maintenance issues and programmatic constraints that drove the needs assessment. "They went through our whole building and identified all the areas that needed work and they put together an estimate for renovation costs, and that came out to $19,900,000 roughly," Massey said, explaining why renovation alone is a major capital undertaking.

The chief said the town also asked for a programming study to compare renovation versus a new building. "That cost is the one that came in at 35,600,000," he said, referring to the hypothetical new-build projection. Massey framed both figures as early estimates: the renovation estimate applies to the current footprint while the programming-study figure was based on an idealized hypothetical site, not specifically the 370 Church Street parcel now under consideration.