The Nashville Metropolitan Police Department and Brown County government both are getting new office spaces.
The Nashville Town Council, Brown County Commissioners and Brown County Council agreed last month to move forward with a couple of building purchases. The town is selling its current police station at 200 Hawthorne Drive to the county for $400,000, and the town is buying the former Home Helpers building at 25 Artist Drive from Harold Cameron for $415,000.
The town council and police had wanted to find a more size-appropriate space for its police force; 200 Hawthorne Drive had excess space, which they’d recently offered to Brown County Community Corrections. Community Corrections had provided IT services and internet to the police station instead of rent.
The county had been talking for years about building a justice center, a courthouse addition or another county office annex building. With this purchase, that won’t be needed, at least for several years, said county commissioners Diana Biddle and Jerry Pittman.
To buy it, Biddle proposed using $400,000 from the $2 million capital improvement loan the county took out in 2018. The county had set aside about $250,000 for asphalt in that loan in case it did not get the full $1 million it requested from the Community Crossings grant for paving this year, and it did get that $1 million. Another $150,000 or so also had been earmarked in that loan to put a concrete floor in the new highway garage. They also could keep putting off the task of replacing the siding at the Sycamore Valley Community Center building on Memorial Drive, which was going to be paid for out of the $2 million loan, Biddle said. Taken together, those sums would allow the building to be paid for without an additional loan, she said.
Jane Gore, who’s a real estate agent in addition to town council president, said that the town’s payment on 25 Artist Drive will be “very similar” to what it’s paying now. Because it had quite a bit of equity in the current police station, the loan amount will be lower than the purchase price, and the interest rate is likely to be “quite a bit lower” than it had before because of the pandemic’s effect on the financial market. “I can’t imagine we’re going to be in bad shape,” she said in response to questions at the April 16 council meeting.
When the police will move out or other county workers will move in is yet to be determined. The closing for the county’s purchase isn’t until the end of June, Biddle said, “so really nothing has been definitely decided yet.”
Also unknown at this time is what the new county building will be called. “I suppose ‘The Old Nashville PD building, where Community Corrections is now’ is a bit too long,” Biddle joked.
