T-L Photos/GAGE VOTA St. Clairsville Police Chief announces that his department will soon have a new headquarters located at 131 South Sugar Street.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — After decades of feeling cramped in its headquarters, the St. Clairsville Police Department will soon have a new home.

The new location’s address is 131 South Sugar St. and the department will hold its official grand opening at 10:30 a.m. August 29. Police Chief Matt Arbenz said that his department has been out of space for several years and is now able to have the space that was sorely needed.

“We’ve had to put stuff in basements and other people’s closets at off-site locations,” Arbenz said. “We’ve just desperately needed something with more room to house the personnel and the equipment that we have to operate.”

He added that the department originally moved into its current headquarters in the 1970s and it’s basically a one-bay garage with an office.

“For a 10-man department with as much equipment and things that we use, we have just completely overgrown that space,” he said.

Arbenz said that, in addition to the grand opening, attendees will be able to tour the facility.

He added that although the grand opening is Aug. 29, he isn’t 100% confident that will be the official opening date due to waiting on the phone provider to complete installing the systems.

Arbenz said that even though the new headquarters is larger, it will have no garage bays for the police cruisers. He said that a garage bay wasn’t in the budget but he is working toward adding a carport in the future.

“Some guys take their vehicles home, but the other ones will be parked outside,” Arbenz said. “We did have plans and we do still have plans for a carport shed with a roof attached to this building. But we just didn’t have it in our budget to get that up this year.

He said he asked a few gas and oil companies if they were looking for tax write-offs to make donations but was unable to line anything up.

The new headquarters does have a garage door which is similar to a bay entrance. He said that the garage door is for officers to back their cruisers into the headquarters when handling evidence in private.

“It couldn’t fit a whole car inside because we turned that area into a big multipurpose room,” Arbenz said. “In that room, we can have meetings and training that could probably fit 15 to 20 people in there.”

The multipurpose room will also have a large TV that’ll go on the wall in front of the garage door.

Arbenz said that he is very thankful to the city administration for its continued support.

“We needed it for a long, long time and we finally were all able to come together this time,” he said.