City Services & Public Safety Facility

Wheat Ridge has always been a community that plans for the future while honoring its past. A new City Services and Public Safety facility at the Lutheran Legacy Campus gives us the opportunity to preserve an iconic landmark, improve public safety, provide better services for residents, and create a civic campus that will serve our community for generations.

The concept would create a centralized location for City Hall, police services, community gathering spaces, and other public amenities while preserving public access and open space as redevelopment occurs on the property.

Our Community Deserves New Civic Spaces

Wheat Ridge's current City Hall and police department offices are more than 50 years old and independent engineering assessments found the buildings are in poor to fair condition with outdated mechanical systems, expensive maintenance needs, and inadequate space for today's public safety and city service operations. Rather than continue to repair these outdated facilities, it is time to invest in a new, modern, centrally-located facility.

Conceptual Rendering of the City Services and Public Safety Facility: Subject to change.

Learn more about the conceptual design for City Hall and Police Department at the Lutheran Legacy Campus here.

Lutheran Legacy Campus Location

City leaders view the site as a unique long-term opportunity to create a civic destination that serves residents for generations while improving access to city services and creating a central gathering place for the community.

Rather than constructing an entirely new campus elsewhere, the City is exploring adaptive reuse of historic buildings combined with thoughtfully designed new construction. The preferred concept preserves significant historic features, including the 1921 Pavilion and the 1932 Women's Wing, while creating a modern civic campus. This approach honors Wheat Ridge's heritage while creating a community destination for future generations.

If the city does not act now, the portion of the Lutheran Legacy Campus that could service this purpose could be developed privately and lost to future generations. This opportunity is time-sensitive and may not come again. This is our moment.

Benefits for Residents

Residents will receive:

• A single, accessible location for City services.
• Modern public meeting spaces.
• Improved customer service.
• Better emergency preparedness.
• Enhanced security for visitors and employees.
• Preservation of an important historic landmark.
• New public gathering spaces and green areas integrated into the campus.

Fiscal Responsibility

City Council has intentionally taken a deliberate approach.

Before asking residents to consider any funding, the City has completed:

• A comprehensive Facilities Master Plan.
• Multiple architectural studies.
• Feasibility analyses.
• Preliminary cost estimates.
• Ongoing design refinement.

The next step is to validate costs and develop a financing strategy before any final construction decisions are made.

Why Now?

• Construction costs continue to increase over time.
• Existing facilities continue to age and require more maintenance.
• Planning now allows the City to make thoughtful, informed decisions rather than waiting until facilities become critical failures.
• Acting proactively is generally more cost-effective than reacting to emergencies.

Wheat Ridge Police Department Needs Modern Facilities

Facility conditions impact service delivery.

Independent assessments have found that the current City Hall and Police Headquarters are in poor-to-fair condition, with significant space constraints that affect operations, public safety, and service delivery.

Officers and staff have adapted to these limitations for decades, but the challenges continue to grow as policing evolves and the department expands.

Public safety is about more than the building.

A modern police facility isn't about creating a nicer building. It's about providing officers with the tools, technology, training space, and security infrastructure needed to serve the community effectively for the next 50 years.

Better facilities improve efficiency, reduce operational challenges, and allow officers to spend more time focused on serving residents.

A public safety campus supports future generations.

The current facility was designed for a much smaller department and a very different era of policing.

Building a modern public safety campus ensures future generations of Wheat Ridge residents receive the same high-quality public safety services residents expect today.

Department has roughly doubled in size.

In the 70’s, WRPD had 60 sworn officers to 90+ now. Our support staff has significantly increased since then to include Co-responders, victim advocates, Public Information Office, Administrative help, Records, Evidence, Investigations Techs, Crime Analyst and Community Services Officers.

Evidence department constantly faces storage challenges.

All our evidence is split between three locations: evidence room, basement and shops. We are constantly working to shuffle things around or seek ways to free up space. Traveling between three places to review evidence ahead of trials is unsustainable and impractical.

Officer safety, custody concerns with no secured parking.

We have insufficient parking around the police department for our officers, who are coming at times in the middle of the night into work. Anybody can walk up to them from the surrounding park and area, so at times they have to have their head on a swivel. No sally port on the door into our holding cells makes it more challenging to bring in custody’s and poses potential risk of them fleeing.