WINONA, Minn. – The City Council voted unanimously to proceed with plans for a new police headquarters just north of the Courthouse. The site is mostly a county parking lot along Washington Street. The building would add to the growing governmental campus between the Highway 43 bridge to Wisconsin and the Courthouse. It’s hardly a done deal. About $7.5 million, probably from the state, is needed for preliminary architectural work and land acquisition. On the site currently are the Red Men Lodge bar on and the Midwest bail-bond office on Third Street. If the project needs more space across an alley, there are one-floor nondescript abandoned office structure and Engravs flooring store on Second Street and the former Winona Monument masonry plant on Third Street. The Washington Street plan doesn’t have Fire Department space, which had been included in early discussion. About the current Washington Street plan, another preliminary step for the City Council to create a joint city-county task force to narrow the scope of the project. The County Board already has assented to keeping county and municipal policing in a single building but specifics remain to be worked out. The new structure, pegged at $23 million to $26 million, would replace the current joint-agency Law Enforcement Center next to the Court Courthouse.
A triangulating of services. The Washington Street site would come close to juxtapositioning city and county policing agencies, the new county jail, and the historic Courthouse.
In the way. At the far end of the proposed site is a two-story rental house in disrepair and behind that the Red Mens Lodge bar on Third Street across from the Courthouse. Image: Steve Lunde