When it rained, water ran down the walls of the old Covington Police Department at the corner of East Pleasant and North Maple.

Ceiling tiles bulged. Light covers browned beneath pooled rainwater. Upstairs in the evidence room, a detective held up mold-covered insulation with a broom.

That was February 2017.

On Friday, on the hill where the old Covington Grammar School still stands, city leaders announced what will be built there.

Monte Belew, a senior adviser to U.S. Rep. David Kustoff, R-Tenn., announced nearly $5 million in FEMA funding for a new Covington Police Department Emergency Services facility. It will house the police department, the city’s emergency operations center and a public tornado safe room.

“We are getting ready to announce an emergency safe room and a home for our department that has been treated like stepchildren over the years and been scattered all over the buildings,” said Mayor Jan Hensley.

Police Chief Donna Turner called it a new chapter for the department.

“We are not just building a facility, we are forging the future of public safety,” she said.

What will it be?

The center is planned to be about 16,000 square feet, Hensley said, including 11,000 square feet of FEMA safe space.

The safe room is designed to protect more than 2,000 people during a tornado or extreme wind event. It will shelter both city employees who keep working during an emergency and residents who need somewhere to go.

The building will also hold investigative offices, forensic processing space, a library, a sally port and administrative offices, Turner said.

“For our community, it will be the flagship displaying the investment you are making in public safety in Covington,” she said.

Maps and a concept sketch of the facility were on display at the ceremony.

Why a safe room?

When a tornado struck Covington on March 31, 2023, Hensley said, “we had no public access for tornado safe space within the city.”

“We had no place to go,” he said. “We saw the strength of our community in the days that followed. We also saw a gap in our ability to protect the people as the next storm comes. This project is part of our response to what we learned.”

Belew, a former Henry County sheriff, said Kustoff visited Covington days after the tornado.

“Having served in law enforcement myself for many years, I also know how important it is for officers and first responders to have the facility that allows them to do their job safely and effectively,” he said.

Hensley credited Turner with keeping the project moving.

“She never let her foot off the gas,” he said.

How did we get here?

In early 2017, a consultant hired to conduct a spatial study toured the department’s headquarters at the corner of East Pleasant and North Maple.

“He expressed to me that our facility was truly the worst that he had ever seen,” then-Police Chief Buddy Lewis told the mayor and aldermen.

The building, constructed in 1957 to serve as City Hall, leaked, had electrical problems, and wasn’t compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. There was no privacy for investigators and no security for anyone inside.

In summary, Lewis said, the building “is an embarrassment.”

On Feb. 21, 2017, the board voted unanimously to let then-Mayor Justin Hanson proceed with a new facility.

“If we can, we need to move on a new building expeditiously and purposefully,” then-Vice Mayor Mac McGowan said.

Weeks later, an inspection by the state fire marshal’s office turned up “quite a few things” that needed to be fixed, and the city attorney recommended the department leave as soon as possible.

“Y’all need to get someplace safe,” then-Alderwoman Minnie Bommer told Lewis. “We don’t have a choice.”

Where did they go?

In August 2017, officers packed boxes, loaded lockers onto dollies and left the building.

The patrol division moved to South Main Street, across from the post office. Detectives and the Special Crime Unit went to the former library on West Church Street. Lewis took an office in the Covington Municipal Center.

It was supposed to be temporary. The new station was expected to be finished in 18 to 24 months.

Before the move, Lewis warned city leaders about what splitting up the department would mean.

“The efficiency in serving the public will not be what it should be,” he said. “I don’t want to still be doing this in two or 2 1/2 years.”

Friday’s announcement came more than nine years later.

The department is still housed in the former library and the Civic Center Annex, former Mayor Justin Hanson said Friday.

“The police department has never had a place of its own since its existence,” Hanson said, “especially a brand-new place.”

So what took so long?

Picking a spot, for starters.

City leaders first chose the 4.2-acre Grammar School property at Church and College streets. Then they learned a 1978 parks grant, which paid for the tennis courts there, restricted how the land could be used.

Converting the property, abating asbestos, demolishing the old school and relocating the tennis courts pushed the estimate to $6.6 million.

“I get the sticker shock,” Lewis said in October 2017. “It’s adequately sized. It’s not a Cadillac, but it’s not a VW bug, either.”

That same month, Bommer told her colleagues what she was hoping for.

“I’d like to be here when they cut the ribbon on it,” she said.

“Me too,” Lewis chimed in.

In February 2018, a committee vote on a site near H.T. Hackney ended in a 2-2-2 tie. Two months later, the board voted down a $6.5 million loan agreement after residents spoke out against the cost and the debt it would bring. Critics nicknamed it the Buddy Lewis Police Palace.

Among those who opposed the project at the time was business owner Jan Wade Hensley, who is now the city’s mayor.

“You strap on debt, you sink the ship,” he said that night.

Lewis, frustrated with the criticism, said he never asked for a palace.

“We just need a home,” he said. “If it’s a pup tent that gives us what we need, it’s a pup tent!”

A possible USDA grant brought the project back up in 2019, but by then construction costs had climbed and the full plan was estimated at $7.7 million.

What changed?

The safe room.

Shortly after talks about a new station began, Hanson said Friday, then-Fire Chief Richard Griggs and then-Emergency Management Agency Director Tommy Dunavant came to him with an idea to help offset the cost to taxpayers.

Through the county’s hazard mitigation plan, there was an annual grant opportunity that neither the county nor another municipality was going to use, Hanson said. Griggs and Dunavant applied for it, with plans for a safe room surrounded by a police department.

In February 2020, the city approved a plan built around that FEMA hazard mitigation funding. At the time, it was planned for 18 acres near H.T. Hackney.

By then, Lewis had left and Larry Lindsey was the police chief.

“It would be practical, we’d be a good steward of taxpayer dollars and we’d get a quality building we could be proud of,” Lindsey said.

In January 2023, the city closed on the sale of the old East Pleasant headquarters for $200,000.

In April 2024, after the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency approved the application, Hensley signed the grant application for submission to FEMA.

Eventually, the project returned to the Grammar School property.

“Now you’ve come back to this, our original location,” Hanson said Friday.

Back where it started

For Lewis, who now directs the Tennessee Highway Safety Office, the site means something more.

He went to grammar school there. In 2017, he told The Leader he remembered eating “many a school lunch” in the cafeteria.

“I recall walking up and down these hills when I was this tall, and it was a lot easier to get up and down these hills than it was today, I can assure you,” he said Friday.

He said housing all divisions in one place will mean face-to-face meetings instead of phone calls and drives across town, and will save taxpayers the cost of keeping up several old buildings.

He also remembered what the department left behind.

“Can you imagine coming to work every day and knowing that your office may be flooded with water every time it rained?” he said. “Folks, that was a reality.”

How much will it cost?

The ceremonial check presented Friday was made out to the city for $4,991,441.96.

A January 2025 police department report put the total project at that same amount, with federal money covering 90% and the city and TEMA splitting the remaining 10%. Under that estimate, the city’s share would be about $250,000.

What’s next?

Design and construction are still ahead. Hanson said construction will probably take another two to three years.

He offered some perspective, pointing to a bridge project near Mobile, Alabama, that he said has been going on for 30 years.

“So this is not so bad,” he joked.

Belew said Kustoff’s office looks forward to coming back for the groundbreaking.

The city is selling keepsake bricks

The old grammar school building later housed the Tipton County Commission on Aging and Covington Parks and Recreation. Soon, it will come down.

“Our mission will be to honor the past, build our future and strengthen our commitment to service,” Turner said.

Residents will have a chance to take a piece of the past home.

In the coming weeks, the city will sell original bricks from the school as keepsakes, along with commemorative bricks that will be placed around the flagpole at the new police department, Parks and Recreation Director Molly Glass said. Keepsake bricks will be $20 and commemorative bricks will be $100. Bricks can be purchased through the parks and recreation website.

Proceeds will go toward improvements to the adjacent park, “allowing a piece of our past to help shape the future of this space for generations to come,” Glass said.

Nine years later

The city looks different now. Mayors, aldermen, officers and police chiefs have come and gone. Most of the officers who went to work in the building with water running down the walls have moved on to other departments, retired or died.

The department kept going anyway, through nine years in buildings that were never meant to be permanent.

On Friday, its officers stood in front of the crowd on the old school hill. Turner was in tears by the end of her remarks.

“I’m proud to serve as your chief and have the honor of serving each of you every day,” she said.

She closed with a verse from Psalm 127: “Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.”

Nine years after they were scattered across downtown, Covington’s watchmen are getting a home of their own – at 401 S. College Street.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I first walked through the old Covington Police Department in February 2017, when I was reporting for The Leader. Officers were embarrassed for anyone to see the leaks, the mold and the damage, but they let the public see it anyway. I’ve covered the facility project since that time, and quotes and information in this story come from that reporting and approved minutes of Covington Board of Mayor and Aldermen meetings.