Public Safety Building, foreground
NEWBURGH – The Public Safety Building in Newburgh was built in the early 1970s. The facility, at the foot of Broadway, houses the city’s police and fire departments and is in need of significant upgrades, repairs and environmental remediation.
The problem is Newburgh does not have the $40 million to build a new facility nor does it have the bonding capacity to do so.
Some at City Hall would like to consider, sometime down the road, constructing a new building on lower Broadway. That is getting pushback by some city council members.
Mayor Judy Kennedy believes there could be another way to build a new facility without the city laying out big bucks and that would be having a private company build and own it.
“What they do then is that there is a 20-year plan whereby they own the building and the city leases it for a period of time,” Kennedy said. “It actually has a public funding piece to it and so we end up at the end of 20 years and they turn the building back over to the city.”
Having a private company build government facilities and lease them back is a fairly common practice. The new FBI building at Stewart Airport was built by a private company for the government, which leases it back.
