IUPD plans to move into old fraternity house next week

After looking for a new home for several years, the IU Police Department can now say goodbye to its North Jordan housing and hello to 17th Street.\nIUPD plans to begin moving into its new station on Jan. 24.\nThe police station is currently sharing its 801 N. Jordan Ave. location with Residential Programs and Services. IUPD’s new location will be at the old Kappa Alpha Psi house, 1469 E.17th St. The building has been vacant for more than a decade.\nIUPD hopes to be fully moved in by mid-February, but it depends on the installation of several different fixtures. \n“This building is typically for housing,” said IUPD Capt. Jerry Minger of IUPD’s current location. “It’s not always the best location to bring people in when the primary purpose of the building is for managing housing.”\nIUPD has been crunched for space for quite some time. When Minger began working in 1972, IUPD was located in the same building and had been before Minger’s arrival.\nAt the moment, Minger said, IUPD occupies an office space that should only be used for one officer, but is being occupied by four people.\n“There are often times four people using three desks,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t have the money, we just don’t have enough space.”\nIn the new station, IUPD staff will occupy the first two floors of the former Kappa Alpha Psi house. The new station will allow investigators, operations and other aspects of the department to be closer in proximity and allow for easier communication, Minger said.\nRight now, investigators cannot walk out their doors and see their colleagues, Minger said. They have to walk out two doors and down a hallway just to see other people in their department.\nBecause the station in which IUPD is currently located is so small, police have been working out the necessary details of how to set up their new location for weeks, Minger said.\n“We are retrofitting our communications into a building that is meant for that,” he said. “We can now reevaluate our needs by looking at what kinds of phones we will need. We want to utilize communication through the architecture.”\nThe new location will also solve many security issues that the current location must deal with. At the moment, citizens can’t just come into the building. They have to stand in the weather and be buzzed in and watched on a camera. The new station will allow people to come into a secure alcove out of the weather, Minger said.\nThere are about one hundred full-time and part-time employees who have keys to get into the station, but with the new location, keys will no longer be needed. All employees will be buzzed in.\n“Right now, we consider our phones coming in to be highly sensitive to our communications,” Minger said. “For our phones to come in, they also have to go through the RPS system, which isn’t always best for a police department.”\nThe Kappa Alpha Psi house will also be shared with the IU Foundation, which will occupy the third floor of the building. But the IU Foundation doesn’t plan on moving into the Kappa Alpha Psi house until this summer.\n“Our president of the IU Foundation, Curt Simic, is retiring at the end of the year, but he will continue to raise funds for the foundations,” said Barbara Coffman, director of communications for the IU Foundation. \nThe Kappa Alpha Psi building is owned by the IU Foundation, which attempted to find a way for the national fraternity to reacquire the house. In April, Charlie Nelms, former vice president for institutional development and student affairs told the Indiana Daily Student the national fraternity could not reacquire the building because it was not fiscally viable to operate the house as a residence.\n“There was a total renovation of the building,” said University Architect Robert Meadow, as he noted how the building went through a complete renovation from a fraternity house to a police station and a home for the IU Foundation.