Lady Lake Police Headquarters Planning Study

The engagement

What We Did

Lady Lake sits in Lake County, Florida, along the US-27 and US-441 corridor, and is entering the most intensive growth period in its history. The Town retained The Center for Public Safety to prepare an integrated study combining three components: a strategic staffing assessment, a space needs analysis, and cost estimation. Population is projected to rise from approximately 17,300 residents to 30,455 by 2045, a 76 percent increase, with a buildout of roughly 5,000 new homes driving a 57.4 percent surge between 2025 and 2031. General calls for service are projected to increase 44 percent by 2030, and traffic citations and accidents by 43 percent.

The staffing component projects the department growing from 38 personnel in 2025 to 68 by 2045, with the Patrol Division expanding from 23 to 40 positions and the Investigations Division from 3 to 9. Rather than relying on per capita ratios, the patrol model derives minimum staffing from projected calls for service, average handling time per incident, the share of calls requiring a dispatched response, a force factor for incidents needing more than one officer, and an efficiency adjustment for technology. The projection is front loaded, concentrating additions in the years of heaviest development.

Those personnel figures set the program for the building. The Town asked to see the facility at two sizes, and we programmed each one room by room, sizing every function against the staffing it has to hold and applying efficiency factors of 25 to 30 percent for walls, corridors, mechanical systems, and circulation. The smaller option is a two-story building of 45,994 gross square feet carrying a probable project cost of $45,076,121 at $625 per square foot of construction. The larger option is 62,354 gross square feet, priced in two market scenarios so the Town could test its exposure to construction escalation, at $53,214,000 assuming $575 per square foot and $56,784,000 assuming $625, a variance of $3,570,000 or 6.7 percent. Site development, technology, specialized equipment, and owner-provided items are carried identically in both of those scenarios. Either option sits on the same recommended 5.5-acre site with room for future expansion, and each accommodates the full 68 personnel projected through 2045. The larger program adds the community-facing and training space the smaller one cannot hold, including a 1,750 square foot community meeting room, a 940 square foot patrol briefing room seating 60, and a 2,125 square foot fitness center. The study closes with a four phase implementation strategy running from funding authorization and site acquisition through design, construction, and occupancy.