We took a slight detour earlier this month to check out the newly reconfigured and repaved Wellesley Police Department parking lot, a project pushed from 2019 until this summer.

police parking lot under work — Police parking lot construction scene from the summer

According to Wellesley Executive Director Meghan Jop, the delay in part was due to having to come up with a memorandum of understanding with the Wellesley Housing Authority, which has neighboring property. The configuration of the space is unique, she said during a May 24 Select Board meeting (see Wellesley Media recording about 52 minutes in).

The project involved reconfiguration to add parking spaces, improve layout, and provide better accessibility. Also now gone from the area: the old green bus stop that used to face the street.

Wellesley bus stop, dismantled — Bus stop, dismantled during spring

The town’s been hanging on to $150K in capital funds for traffic/parking for the project since fiscal year 2019, and approved an additional amount of cash leftover from other traffic/parking work to bring the police parking lot project total to $314K. (Jeez, no wonder we keep putting off repaving our driveway…)

While the freshly lined spaces in the new lot easily contained our sedan, they proved more challenged by the half dozen humungous 4×4 pickups surrounding us.

Jop said the police are also looking to secure grants to install electric vehicle charging stations for which some of the aforementioned allocation could serve as matching funds. Not sure that’ll do the monster truck owners any good for their private vehicles, but the police force is converting to hybrid vehicles and testing an electric one.

For even smaller modes of transporation, the town installed a bike repair station outside the police headquarters a while back, and there is also bike parking available there.