MANCHESTER — When residents enter the new police station, set to open this December on Valley Street, Police Chief David Mara wants people to feel comfortable and secure.

“We want to make this a community-oriented building,” said Mara during a preliminary viewing of the new station, currently under construction as part of the new city municipal complex.

The main lobby will feature a secure service window where people can get an accident report or gun permit, secure doors to different areas of the building and a large conference room that can be used for meetings for neighborhood watch groups and community classes. Meeting space is lacking in the current building, said Mara, and he hopes the new space brings in more groups.

The station was designed for the future, featuring plenty of space for storage and staff, as well as state-of-the art training and meeting space that can accommodate other law enforcement agencies.

“As we grow, we're going to need more officers or could have another unit added,” said Mara. “Twenty years from now no one's going back to the city and saying we need a bigger station.”

The current police station on Chestnut Street has been overcapacity for a number of years, with evidence storage in the attic, detectives sharing computers, and a lack of meeting space for the community and police officers. During a tour of the new station on Tuesday, Mara repeatedly pointed to increased security measures, storage space and overall improved conditions for the officers.

Capt. Fred Roach, who is overseeing the day-to-day progress of the new building, said the station took nine months to design. Lavallee Brensinger Architects also brought in consultants from Florida who specialize in designing large municipal buildings like police stations and the architects incorporated a number of recommended features that improved safety and efficiency. For example, the police locker rooms are located directly below the patrol division, making it a short trip from arrival to roll call to the gun lockers to the patrol computer station where officers write reports, said Roach.

“It can get them in and out and back on the street quicker,” said Mara.

Unlike the current station, prisoners in holding cells will be visible to police from a secure viewing area. There are separate cells for men, women and juveniles and wheelchair accessible cells. Fingerprinting, bail meetings and interviews can all take place in rooms off of the booking area.

The sex offender registration area will also be separated in the new station, keeping sex offenders coming in to renew their registry information from mingling with the general public in the lobby, said Mara.

The system for securing evidence will be improved as well. Besides added space for general evidence, there will be special secure rooms for storing drugs, cash, weapons and evidence for homicide cases.

“Appeals in homicide cases can go on for years. That's a lot of evidence,” said Mara.

Additional space for detectives will hopefully aid in the turnaround time for cases, said Mara. More rooms for interviewing suspects will all be connected through a central recording room where detectives can watch interrogations. Mara said this room will also speed up investigations, allowing detectives to interview three or four suspects at a time.

The roll call room will be large enough for additional agencies to use during a major incident. The training rooms will include classroom and tactical training areas and will be available to other agencies, as well. The shooting range in the basement will have 10 lanes and a shooting distance up to 25 feet. Police can train in different lighting conditions and shooting at different angles.

“Other than the police academy in Concord, I can't think of one this big,” said Roach.

The communications room in the current station is “like Grand Central Station,” said Mara. It needed to be a more enclosed and quiet space, yet also needed to be more worker friendly to retain staff. The new room, in a far end of the station's upper floors, does that, Mara said, with a more remote location and added natural light.

Increased size of locker rooms, especially for female officers, is seen as a big improvement for workers. There will be 261 lockers for men and 39 for women, as well as additional lockers for SWAT team equipment.

The police stations of Manchester past will not be fully left behind. Administration offices on the station's upper floor will feature a stained glass arched window from the station previous to the Chestnut Street station.

“We want to bring some history with us,” said Mara.

Planning is now underway for phasing from one station to another. While moving computers, desks and files is straight-forward, retaining the chain of evidence and moving large amounts of computer equipment for the communications and dispatch services will be a challenge, Mara said.

Currently, the project is running on time, said Roach, and there is little doubt the police department will be able to move into the new station at the end of 2012.