City of Thornton Fossil Ridge Public Safety Facility

The City of Thornton has seen a large growth of families and businesses moving to their community over the last several years. As the city has grown to become Colorado’s sixth largest city, the Thornton Police Department had an immediate demand to grow with its community.

In 2016, Thornton City Council approved the funding of a new police substation and fire department. Shortly after, Roth Sheppard Architects and Saunders Construction were selected as the design-build team for the new City of Thornton Public Safety facility.

Design for the facility began in September 2016. Saunders and Roth Sheppard worked diligently to provide the city with a highly functional and aesthetically appealing building that met the allowable budget of the City and its tax payers.

Construction began in July 2017, and one month later construction crews discovered what turned out to be the first recorded Torosaurus find in the State of Colorado and also the most complete and best preserved ever found. This event brought on an endless amount of media attention and news stations onsite for the next several weeks. Though this discovery was an exciting moment for the design-build team and the City of Thornton, the project team still kept the owner’s schedule at the forefront. Keeping the project on schedule during this event was critical – as nearly 60 police officers, many of whom will be graduating from the police academy, were expected to be stationed at the new facility.

This shared building is a single-story facility that houses a police substation and full fire department. The Saunders team worked with both departments, collectively, throughout the project. Each area is very distinct from the other, as they have vastly different operation needs.

The police station scope of the facility is highly secure. This portion of the project includes a holding area, office spaces, detective stations, field training and interview rooms. The fire station scope includes a kitchen, day room, sleep rooms, showers and tool rooms. This area also includes a decontamination room that houses specialty equipment to properly clean firefighter gear after each emergency response.

There is also be shared spaces for both departments that includes a workout area, locker rooms and community room.