Every 120 years or so, it’s time for something new.

Or, at least, something recycled.

When Radford and West Radford combined their governments and their populations to become a city in 1892, the building that’s home to the Radford’s police department was already 3 years old. Nearly three years from now, if a city council plan works out, police will move into a building that will be only 71 years old.

The city has chosen Thompson and Litton to provide the engineering and architectural services for a project that will turn the former Old Colony Box Factory at 90 Robertson St. into a new public safety building. The estimated cost of the project is $4 million. This first contract is worth $28,955, plus expenses.

“It’s a facility that’s obviously needed,” said Mayor Tom Starnes. “A study was done almost 20 years ago that pointed out glaring deficiencies.”

Several issues — mostly financial considerations — delayed action, Starnes said.

Police Chief Don Goodman said he and his department are excited and appreciative that the project is moving ahead.

The state of the city’s public safety building has been an issue at least since 1989, when a committee appointed by council — at the suggestion of a circuit court judge — described the building as “grossly inadequate.” There was little privacy, inadequate security and insufficient storage space, according to the 19-year-old report.

Back then, police shared the public safety building with a magistrate’s office, the fire marshal’s office, the city jail and the sheriff’s office. In 1997, some of the crowding was relieved when council authorized an addition to the municipal building and moved the sheriff’s office there. The city is a partner in the regional jail, so that has freed up some room, too.

Of course, the crowding wouldn’t have been as bad if it hadn’t been for that fire. In 1950, a fire turned the four-story building at 601 W. Main St. into a two-story building. In addition to scorch marks and lack of space, the building has problems with heating, cooling and leaks. The electrical system is a problem, and it’s difficult to network computers, Goodman said. And the building doesn’t have an elevator, so people with disabilities can’t get to the second floor.

“We can get you to the first floor,” Goodman said.

But all the interview rooms are on the second floor. There’s no conference room anywhere.

“In our line of work it’s important to be able to communicate with people effectively,” the chief said.

That’s difficult to do when there’s no place to sit and talk.

Besides, Goodman said, “We’re out of space.”

The officers’ locker room is among the old jail cells.

Last year, council paid $175,000 for 1.09 acres at the corner of Rock Road and Wadsworth Street with an eye toward building a new police station there. In February, council gave the Radford University Foundation $500,000 for the old box factory and the 2.96 acres that go with it. The plan is to turn the 42,000-square-foot building into a place where the police department can be reunited with the emergency dispatchers, who now work in a nearby building. And there may be room for other city offices, too, allowing Radford to move its registrar and other services out of rented space and into a city-owned building.

“The city looked for a few years at different possible locations for a new police facility,” said city spokeswoman Becky Hawke. “When the property came available at the corner of Rock Road and Wadsworth Street, the city jumped at the opportunity because they believed it would be about the right-sized space for a two story building and was in a good, accessible location.”

The old factory is an even better location, Hawke said. For one thing, it offers about twice as much building as the Rock Road lot would hold.

  “It was also an adaptive reuse of a building that was only partially being used as storage, and the central location would be nearly impossible to beat,” she said.

The city plans to pay for the project through some combination of general fund money, bonds, loans, grants and the sale of the Rock Road property and the current public safety building. The contract with Thompson and Litton includes testing for the building for asbestos and estimating the cost of removing asbestos from the site. The company will also check for environmental problems and evaluate the potential for LEED certification for the project. LEED measures a building’s energy efficiency and environmental friendliness. Thompson and Litton also plans develop two conceptual designs and, once council has chosen one of them, develop a project schedule and projected cost.

The company thinks it can complete its work within eight weeks.