Grand Avenue in Maspeth could soon be the home of a new, large-scale NYPD facility.
The Police Department is looking to consolidate its property clerk warehouses, which are currently spread across the city in six different facilities, into one central location at 55-15 Grand Ave. The NYPD has reached out to community groups including Community Board 5’s (CB 5) Land Use Committee and Communities of Maspeth and Elmhurst Together (COMET) and others, alerting them of the proposed project.
The six locations where the NYPD currently accepts, catalogs, safeguards and stores property from all NYPD commands, Port Authority Police Department and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner are as follows: Kingsland Avenue Warehouse; Pearson Place Warehouse; Abbott Street Warehouse; Pearson Place Annex, which is city-owned; Bartow Avenue Facility, which is city owned and a temporary location; and Erie Basin Auto Pound, which is a temporary location.
The NYPD was informed by the Department of City-Wide Administrative Services that the leases on two of their warehouses — at Kingsland Avenue and Pearson Place — will not be renewed.
The loss of these two facilities will immediately impact the NYPD’s ability to intake, store and produce evidence as required for court and will result in the loss of 145,000 square feet of space that cannot be taken in by the other facilities.
The Erie Basin Auto Pound, Kingsland Avenue Warehouse, Pearson Place Warehouse and the Pearson Place Annex are all located in zones notorious for coastal flooding. In 2011, the Erie Basin Auto Pound location experienced moderate exterior flooding with no interior breach after Hurricane Irene, but the possibility of future storms continue to pose a threat. The NYPD doesn’t want to risk continuing to house evidence at these the warehouses because the evidence often contains DNA material.
On average, the NYPD takes in more than 500,000 invoices a year, and since 2011, has processed over 2.4 million invoices of property.
By consolidating the warehouses to one central location on Grand Avenue, the NYPD would increase operational efficiency, increase accountability, reduce duplication of services and operation costs, increase security, productivity and satisfaction, provide a humidity- and climate-controlled DNA storage facility, and operate with fewer members of the service.
The NYPD feels the space at 55-15 Grand Ave. would make a great consolidated evidence storage facility because it provides an operationally efficient facility layout, accommodates expansion at a single site through at least 2045, fulfills a single-site consolidation at the lowest expected capital cost, and other factors.
