CSHQA designs new Idaho State Police HQ in Pocatello

Employees at the Idaho State Police regional headquarters helped design the new $5.4 million, 24,000-square-foot building where they will work.

Boise architecture firm CSHQA worked with ISP employees to get their thoughts on how they wanted the facility designed. That’s not a luxury architects frequently get to enjoy, said John Maulin, CSHQA’s executive vice president.

He has designed several law enforcement facilities, including the ISP’s regional headquarters in Meridian, and more often than not client decisions are limited to the command structure. That’s not the approach ISP Region 5 Capt. Eric Dayley chose to take.

Dayley noted that some people spend more time in their office than they do at home, so they deserve to have input on their surroundings.

“Right now we’re talking about carpets,”Dayley said. “I’ve been lugging carpet samples along.”

The architects were planning 36-inch-high counter tops in the front office, but employees asked for them to be 40 inches high. Windows got plenty of employee input.

“One of the things we tried to incorporate was natural lighting, but we are security-conscious,” Dayley said. “We asked for the windows to be put higher. We do have a little break alcove. We did ask for a skylight.”

CSHQA won the competitive bid to design the new $5.4 million, 24,000-square-foot, L-shaped ISP regional headquarters that will house patrol, investigations, POST training, with a new forensics and toxicology laboratory taking up one-third of the space. CSHQA, the project’s design architects, teamed up with JHS Architects of Pocatello, which is drawing the construction documents and serving as the architects at the construction site.

ISP plans to go out for construction bids in the coming weeks with hopes to break ground in August and move in late in 2016, Dayley said.

The move consolidates ISP’s Pocatello offices, which are scattered about town. Dayley commands the patrol and investigations divisions, and he has to drive about 10 minutes to get from one to another. That concerns him less than the confusion the public faces, as they occasionally go to one office and need to be redirected across town.

“The bigger issue is the public,” Dayley said. “It’s very frustrating for the public.”

The new ISP HQ, next to the Idaho Transportation Department, will consolidate and modernize the office facilities. Now, the break room also serves as the conference room and copy room.

“When the colonel (ISP’s commanding officer) comes to town for a staff meeting, we have to go to ISU or somewhere else in town,” Dayley said. “We need to beg and borrow to use somebody’s space.”

The new facility will also have a forensics and toxicology lab custom-designed for the technicians, who assisted CSHQA in the design.

“The way evidence is processed and the work is more streamlined in the forensics lab,” Maulin said.

Idaho State Police has three forensics labs in Coeur d’Alene, Meridian and Pocatello. The Pocatello lab handles controlled substances, blood alcohol and toxicology, Dayley said.

Idaho Department of Transportation donated the roughly 3 acres for the new ISP facility, which is located next to the state police’s existing quarters, which are leased from ITD

ISP Region 5 covers the seven counties in the southeast corner of the state: Bingham, Bannock, Caribou, Power, Bear Lake, Oneida and Franklin, an area about the size of New Hampshire, Dayley said.