After an hour of executive session at their Oct. 22 meeting, members of the Northern Regional Police Department board tabled a decision on a new police headquarters.

The department, which serves Bradford Woods, Marshall, Pine, Richland and Seven Fields, currently is headquartered in the Pine Municipal Building.

According to Pine Manager Jason Kratsas and Bradford Woods Manager Rusti Null, all four municipalities represented on the NRPD board agree the current headquarters is undersized and unequipped for present and future police operations. Seven Fields is not represented on the board.

The board must decide whether to renovate Pine’s municipal building and vacate it for police use or take up St. Barnabas Health System on its land-lease offer and build a new headquarters there.

NRPD Chief Bryan DeWick said due to the municipalities’ uncertainty, the decision will be tabled at least until the next board meeting at 7 p.m. Nov. 20 in the Pine Community Center.

“In the meantime, we’re going to get together with the township managers and try to come up with which option we’re going to go with,” DeWick said.

According to Null, the NRPD currently occupies 9,500 square feet, which was “sufficient for their needs” when it first formed in 2006 as a force of about 29 officers. Now, the force has 42 officers and is striving for 44 officers by the end of the year, DeWick said.

DeWick said the NRPD’s services have grown a lot over the past 25 years, but the facility hasn’t.

“There are some needs that we don’t even have (met) right now. The ability to do digital forensics is one of the big ones. We have a ton of equipment. We have officers trained in it, but we just don’t have anywhere to put it,” he said. “Just recently, we had to go out and rent a storage unit just to hold all of our stuff.”

After Buchart Horn Architects conducted a feasibility study on the current headquarters over the summer, the NRPD worked with them to prepare multiple concepts for the new building and renovation options.

The concepts range in cost from about more than $19.8 million to nearly $29.7 million, according to a Buchart Horn Architects cost summary sheet that Kratsas said the NRPD presented to the municipalities during a budget presentation.

New building: pros and cons

The new building option would allow the architects to design the new headquarters around what the police need now and in the long-term, including more space for necessary equipment. Null said a new building would incur “less maintenance costs for a while” and would “be less disruptive for the police operations than working through a renovation process.”

However, constructing the new building would cost more overall than the renovation option.

The land offered by St. Barnabas is undeveloped, private land — there are no utilities, roads, road access or stormwater management infrastructure. There also are wetlands that would “have to be dealt with,” and there could be a risk of eviction, Kratsas said.

“We’d be taking $20 (million) to $30 million of public funds and not spending them to improve public lands,” Kratsas said.

DeWick said the concern over public development on private land is “out of (his) realm” of expertise, but real estate attorneys the NRPD spoke with said it’s “not a problem” and that the lease is “basically fail-proof.”

“There would never be a circumstance where we would be in danger of losing the building or anything like that,” he said.

The new building project could cost nearly $29 million or $30 million, depending on the specific concept, according to the cost summary sheet. Null said the cost would require municipalities to either raise taxes or take on debt.

“A tax increase would be especially challenging for the vulnerable residents in these communities, since Allegheny County increased their property tax rate by 36% this year and the Pine-Richland School District also is proposing a tax increase for the 2026-27 school year,” she said.

Renovation: pros and cons

According to Null, renovating Pine’s municipal building for NRPD use would cost much less and be finished sooner than the new building option.

But the design would require creative solutions to meet the police department’s needs within the existing structure. DeWick said the lack of space is the “biggest problem right now,” especially secure space for evidence storage.

Although the architects’ renovation plans “were meant to accommodate those needs,” the plans are nascent until the NRPD, the board and Pine discuss further what Pine is willing to give up, DeWick said.

Kratsas said Pine is willing to relocate the municipal workers who use the building to the Pine Community Center, though the renovation concept still limits “expansion potential” due to residential property setbacks.

“The (renovation concept presented by the NRPD) includes building construction that is being built entirely toward the northern property line of 230 Pearce Mill Road,” Kratsas said. “Anytime a new structure is built, the building needs to be checked so that it isn’t too close to the property line (especially between nonresidential and residential uses).”

For now, Kratsas said, it seems renovation is the only viable choice “due to ownership and feasibility issues with the new-build sites,” but the township cannot confirm that until the township managers and NRPD board have further discussions.

“We deeply value the NRPD and recognize their need for improved facilities,” Kratsas said. “Our goal is to support that need responsibly — enhancing public safety while ensuring we remain fiscally responsible to our residents.”

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