THE government is considering selling the lands occupied by the police commissioner’s office on Old Hope Road as well as police property on Ruthven Road to the National Housing Trust and using the proceeds to finance a modern police headquarters elsewhere in Kingston, national security minister, Peter Phillips, confirmed last night.

“We are looking at options that would allow us to build a modern police headquarters,” Phillips told the Observer. “But we are still talking.”

He confirmed that the suitor was the NHT, the state’s housing development and mortgage agency, whose chairman Kingsley Thomas confirmed that the discussions have taken place.

“It is still very preliminary,” Thomas said.

According to Observer sources, the NHT would like to develop middle-income townhouses on the seven acres of land at 103 Old Hope Road where the police headquarters is housed in a series of older wooden buildings which police officials say are in serious disrepair. These townhouses, it is expected, would be sold for between $4 million and $6 million.

On the four acres of land between 1c and 3a Ruthven Road, the NHT proposes to develop an apartment complex with units selling at about $2.5 million, which it believes would be attractive to young professionals.

It is estimated that the market value of the combined 11 acres of land would be in the region of $130 million, which it has been proposed would go towards building the new headquarters on four-and-a-half acres of land in the Swallowfield area, between Tom Redcam Avenue and Arthur Wint Drive. This property now houses the police’s transport and maintenance department.

The Old Hope Road property is considered to be prime real estate and although Thomas insisted that the proposals were still preliminary, he said that would allow the NHT to reach out to middle class contributors.

“We have to balance the portfolio,” Thomas said. “It would be middle-class housing.”

Thomas disputed that the present site of the police headquarters carried social or historic significance which would put the NHT on a collision course with the National Heritage Trust or other heritage societies.

“We have done the work and there is no great historic significance to the buildings,” he said. “The place is rotting down. You can’t have the police headquarters in such conditions.”

Senior police officials agree that the existing environment is far from satisfactory and say that the dispersal of several division and departments across the city impairs management.

“We need a headquarters designed for the police force,” said one senior officer. “This has been on the agenda for a long time. The Old Hope Road offices are inadequate.”