The full-scale demolition of the old Chesterton Police Department station house at the northeast corner of Broadway and North Eighth Street began this morning, Monday, Sept. 23, as subcontractor Indiana Earth took a claw-equipped excavator to the west side of the building.
The old station is being calved from the town hall, along a north/south axis which runs along the west wall of the meeting room’s restrooms. For the last three weeks, general contractor Larson-Danielson Construction has been at work inside the building, abating asbestos, cutting joints and separating the station from that wall, as well as relocating and capping the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services which formerly had been shared with the rest of the town hall complex.
Once the demolition operation has been completed, Larson-Danielson will construct a public parking lot on the old station’s footprint. The whole job should be done by Dec. 28.
Meanwhile, in the new station house on the south side of Broadway, the old-timers who spent their entire career in the old one may be feeling a bit melancholy today.
“We watched the new building go up across the street,” Police Chief Tim Richardson said. “Now we’ll watch the old one go down. It’s a bittersweet moment. It has history, because a lot of our people worked there for many years.”
