State troopers in Mat-Su to vacate Palmer headquarters by mid-2028

What you need to know:

• Alaska State Troopers must vacate their longtime Palmer headquarters by June 2028 to allow the Palmer Police Department to expand its office space in the city-owned building.
• The troopers are seeking new office space, likely between Palmer and Wasilla, officials said.
• A broader plan to build a centralized public safety facility in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough is under discussion but remains in the early stages, with no official plans or funding secured.

• Short on time but need the local news scoop? Get free weekly news in your inbox for Mat-Su, from Mat-Su.

PALMER —Alaska State Troopers must vacate their Palmer city-owned Mat-Su headquarters at the end of their current lease so the Palmer Police Department can expand its office space.

The troopers will move their Detachment B post out of downtown Palmer and “are currently exploring other options for professional office space for when the lease expires,” Alaska Department of Public Safety spokesman Austin McDaniel said in a statement last month. Detachment B stretches from near Cantwell to Glennallen and includes the entirety of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

Public safety officials are likely looking to relocate the headquarters to a centralized area between Palmer and Wasilla, McDaniel said in an interview.

Detachment B has leased the current downtown Palmer space from the city for 41 years, according to state lease documents. About 10 staff members and dozens of troopers currently work out of the facility, with most using desks available on an as-needed basis, McDaniel said. The building is one of seven spaces leased by troopers in Mat-Su, including a satellite post in Meadow Lakes. 

The city notified public safety officials in September that the lease will not be renewed when it ends in June 2028, Palmer City Manager Kolby Zerkel said in a statement. Palmer Police Chief Shane Bozeman and Cmdr. Luke Szipszky requested the decision, she said.

“This decision was driven primarily by the fact that the department’s operational needs have outgrown their current footprint,” Zerkel said. “While AST has been a vital partner to the city of Palmer for many years, the police department determined that expansion of its operations is necessary to adequately meet future needs.”

Located in a roughly 13,400-square-foot building in downtown Palmer, adjacent to a state pretrial jail and a block from the Palmer Courthouse, troopers and Palmer police have shared the facility since 1985 under a lease with the city currently valued at about $56,000 per year. The troopers occupy about 8,900 square feet, according to the lease. Palmer’s 911 emergency dispatch base also operates out of the facility.

That’s left Palmer’s police force without the space it needs to operate, Szipszky said in an interview. More than 20 Palmer officers and staff members share 4,500 square feet, with no room for staff meetings, necessary gym training equipment, or adequate storage, he said.

A review conducted more than 20 years ago by Palmer-based Wolf Architecture found that Palmer police need about 17,000 square feet to operate, Szipszky said — a target they won’t reach even after absorbing the troopers’ current space.

“What we’ve been doing for the last 20 years is making every square inch of this place usable, and then trying to reimagine different ways to use the same space more efficiently,” he said. “But it ends up like any other place, where you get more and more stuff, and there’s nowhere to put it. We have gotten to a point where we need to expand or we’re bursting at the seams.”

Palmer officials have previously considered constructing a new public safety complex to house the troopers along with the city’s police, fire and dispatch services. A “safety service building” was included in the city’s 2024 capital projects and legislative priorities list.

But Szipszky said that plan was put on hold and ultimately dropped from the 2025 priorities list due to several failed grant funding efforts, last year’s city manager uncertainty, and the costly resignation of short-term Palmer City Manager Stephen Jellie.

Expanding into the troopers’ current space, instead, is a workable solution that will give Palmer police enough room to operate for the time being, he said. City officials also plan to give the building’s weathered and peeling light blue exterior a fresh coat of paint this year.

“We all know this is a very old building. This is not the end solution, but it’s a better solution than what we have going on now,” he said.

The announcement comes on the heels of a Mat-Su Borough-led effort to open a new centralized public safety facility that would bring all area emergency dispatch services, troopers from seven leased locations across the borough, and two borough fire stations into a single facility on Bogard Road.

The roughly 45,000-square-foot facility could cost up to $22 million to build, with funding from various sources, including grants and state lease payments, borough officials said in August.

Borough officials have not created any official plans for the proposed building, and related legislation has not appeared before the Mat-Su Assembly. Borough Manager Mike Brown presented a request for support for the concept to the region’s state representatives during a meeting last month.

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com