St. Clair Shores officials gathered on Oct. 30 to cut the ribbon on a brand-new police headquarters, closing out a project that replaced a station the department had used since 1961. The old building, roughly 65 years old, had grown increasingly difficult to maintain and inadequate for modern policing needs before the city tore it down and built a new facility in its place.
The ceremony, led by Mayor Kip Walby and Police Chief Jason Allen, marked the end of a construction process that pushed the entire department out of its longtime home for two years. During that stretch, officers relocated to facilities at St. Lucy's Parish, according to a city alert that announced the temporary move would begin Nov. 1, 2024, with the city noting at the time it expected to be in place for over a year. C & G Newspapers reported the dedication on Oct. 30, 2026, before MLive published its Nov. 7 report, which described the new headquarters as costing between $14 million and $15 million.
As C & G Newspapers reported, the 1960s facility was torn down and a brand-new building constructed in its place, with the city using American Rescue Plan Act funds to help cover the cost. City Manager Dustin Lent told the St. Clair Shores City Council in October 2024 that the total cost with hard and soft costs for the police department came to $14,742,223, according to city council minutes.
Federal Relief Dollars Carried Much of the Load
St. Clair Shores received $21,247,393 in American Rescue Plan Act funding, per the same council minutes, and city leaders had earlier flagged a funding gap on the broader project. In April 2025, the broader project faced an approximately $4 million shortfall.
In April 2025, the city council approved a resolution of intent to pursue up to $5 million in bonds. Cost estimates for the combined police-and-fire project shifted over time: an October 2023 budget estimate put the two projects at a combined $18.405 million, while October 2024 minutes cited by C & G Newspapers show a combined hard-and-soft-cost total of $25,335,083 — figures that reflect different scopes and shouldn't be read as directly comparable.
Two Milestones, One Celebration
The timing of the ribbon-cutting wasn't an accident. The dedication coincided with St. Clair Shores' 75th anniversary and the police department's 100th anniversary, giving city leaders two reasons to celebrate at once. The city is also celebrating 75 years, C & G Newspapers noted, and Walby used the occasion to highlight 85 dedicated professionals who work in the department.
The new headquarters wasn't the city's only recent capital project. St. Clair Shores also opened a new central fire station, which the Macomb Daily reported cost about $10.5 million, and the city completed renovations to its public library that the same outlet put at $2.6 million. Those projects, taken together with the police station, gave residents a rare stretch of back-to-back municipal ribbon-cuttings this year.
Construction Timeline Still Has Gaps
Exactly when construction began on the new police station isn't pinned down in city records reviewed for this story, though C & G Newspapers reported that work started around two years before the Oct. 30 ribbon-cutting. The precise date police operations fully returned to the new building from their temporary St. Lucy's Parish location also hasn't been documented in the available city records. What is clear is that the project replaced a station that had outlived its usefulness and that the city leaned heavily on pandemic-era federal relief funding, along with the newly authorized bonds, to get the new headquarters built.
