SOUTH PORTLAND — The sewage system in the women’s locker room at the South Portland police station backed up Monday night, leading to Police Chief Dan Ahern to call for emergency maintenance. 

This is one of the reasons the city is working on buying the site of a former Walgreens at 279 Main St. near the Broadway intersection. Officials want to build a new police station there.

“The building’s just old,” Ahern said. “It’s kind of like an old car. You can keep replacing some parts, but at some point, the rust just becomes so prevalent that it’s no longer gonna pass inspection, it’s not gonna be road-worthy, and that’s the case here.”

Ahern added that in the current building, which was built in 1967, the basement floods, putting essential records and evidence collection at risk. The HVAC is old. It’s not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The boiler was being repaired on Tuesday. The two holding cells recently failed inspection.  

While the facilities team is doing its best, Ahern said the police department has outgrown its building and will need a new one.

If voters approve a bond in November, the new building will likely be ready by 2028, Morelli said. The city will tear down the former Walgreens and construct a brand-new police station. Ahern said it will likely have updated facilities for the officers, a break room, an updated gym, a more professional way to handle and store evidence and other things the current building is lacking.

Initially, South Portland considered turning the old Mahoney School — a historic former school that closed in 2023 — into an all-encompassing municipal building that would include the police department, said Town Manager Scott Morelli. But, the $194 million price tag caused the city to take a different direction.

“If it were all to fall on the property tax rate, it would have been over a 20 percent increase for taxpayers, and that just wasn’t something that was acceptable,” Morelli said. 

South Portland won the bid for the former Walgreens location at $2.525 million. The purchase of the property, which is set to close in April, will be mostly covered by $1 million in TIF revenue and $1.5 million in police asset forfeiture funds that the police department received from taking part of a booking operation bust in Portland a few years ago, Ahern said. 

The purchase is dependent on the city council approving it at its March 19 meeting.

If voters approve a bond in November, the new building will likely be ready by 2028, Morelli said. The city will tear down the former Walgreens and construct a brand-new police station. Ahern said it will likely have updated facilities for the officers, a break room, an updated gym, a more professional way to handle and store evidence and other things the current building is lacking.