GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) -The City of Green Bay is one step closer to buying a 100-year-old building.
The city’s finance committee submitted a positive recommendation Tuesday to the Common Council, which will ultimately vote on the purchase of the former Press-Gazette building.
It’s being explored as an option for the new home of the city’s police department.
For council members, purchasing the former Press-Gazette building would be a win-win.
“Worst-case scenario, we buy this building, we go through the design process and decide that it’s not going to work. We still end up with a building that’s prime for redevelopment,” said District 9 Alderperson Brian Johnson.
The building, located at 435 East Walnut Street, was built 100 years ago — and sits right next to City Hall.
The city would pay $3.6 million for the building and two parking lots.
Alderperson Bill Galvin, a former Green Bay police officer, agrees the department needs to move on from their current location on South Adams Street.
“I’m hoping one, that this is feasible, that we can make it work for us, and not as a band-aid type fix, but as something that we could look at maybe 50-100 years down the road and say this is still a viable building for this community and for the officers that work in it,” said Galvin.
Costs to renovate the former Press-Gazette building are unknown, but Johnson believes it would be significantly cheaper than trying to build a new police headquarters.
“We think this could be easily half of building new, maybe even a little bit less,” said Johnson.
The full Common Council will weigh in on potentially buying the property during their next meeting on Aug. 27.
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