The former Evergreen Subaru building, seen Tuesday, on Center Street in Auburn will be the future home of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office Harriman architects are finalizing designs for the new space. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

AUBURN — Plans for the new Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office on Center Street include two additions to the former car dealership building and new features, including an indoor firing range.

The Androscoggin County commissioners received their first look at the proposal during a presentation by architect William Gatchell from the Auburn design firm Harriman at last week’s meeting.

The county purchased the former Evergreen Subaru property at 774 Center St. for $4.5 million in February 2022 for its new public safety building. The 6.54-acre site is less than two miles north of the current Sheriff’s Office in the Androscoggin County Building at the corner of Turner and Court streets.

The main structure on the property, which includes the former Evergreen Subaru showroom and some offices, is 12,619 square feet and was built in 2005.

That will be turned into a new facility which will house the sheriff’s office, including the administrative offices, patrol, criminal investigation, civil divisions and the regional communications center. The Androscoggin County Jail will remain at its current location at 40 Pleasant St.

New features include additional classroom space, meeting rooms, a training center, fitness room and the indoor firing range. The idea, Gatchell said, was to make sure the facility meets the sheriff’s needs for the next 100 years.

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When finished, the facility will contain more than 30,000 square feet. The communication center will have room to expand, he added.

The design is still being finalized. One conceptual drawing had the firing range attached to the facility, but another had it as a separate building.

Gatchell refused to give an estimated cost for the facility until the final details are agreed upon. He expected to have those numbers available by next week’s commissioners meeting.

He did say that using the existing showroom building will save the county more than $3 million in building costs.

Sheriff Eric Samson said the availability of training facilities and conference rooms will be a significant cost savings. The county could make those areas available to other agencies.

“I love this. I want to work toward this,” Commissioner Garrett Mason of Lisbon said.

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The FBI is expected to maintain a small working space in the facility, Samson said.

Any bonding the county wants to use to financed the building will have to wait until 2025 at the earliest. Chairman Sally Christner of Turner said there is absolutely no time to consider it before the November 2024 election. Work would need to be completed by August to fast track a bond package, which commissioners are unwilling to do.

One problem, Christner noted, is that the County Budget Committee needs to weigh in on the proposal, and the committee currently lacks a quorum, she noted.

In other business, commissioners approved spending $300,000 from its pandemic relief funds to replace the boilers in the jail. Those were originally expected to be part of an HVAC upgrade to county building, but the several million-dollar price tag was more than the commissioners wanted to spend on the aging building.

The board also approved another $300,000 of pandemic funds for a jail medical contract. Lewiston Commissioner Edouard Plourde was unhappy with using those funds to pay for operational costs which will become part of the overall budget next year.

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