Governor Carcieri and Col. Brendan P. Doherty, superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, at yesterday’s ceremonial groundbreaking for a new state police headquarters in North Scituate.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

SCITUATE — After a years-long effort, and with the state having ruled out three other locations, the Rhode Island State Police today will begin construction of a new base of operations at the site of its longtime headquarters in North Scituate.

“I didn’t think this day was ever going to come,” a smiling Governor Carcieri yesterday told a crowd of dignitaries assembled for a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new headquarters. The project has suffered from problems related to the preferred sites as well as the state’s longstanding budget woes.

“We’ve been working on this, it seems like, since I came into office,” Carcieri said. “…This thing moved around, moved around. I said, the voters approved it. Let’s do it. Let’s do it.”

Voters approved a $48-million bond issue to acquire land and to build a headquarters in 2002, but state police commanders acknowledged yesterday that because the referendum question referred to a project site in Cranston, none of that borrowing authority can be used to build in North Scituate.

Instead, in order to pay for the scaled-down $27-million project, Carcieri and the General Assembly have committed money from the state’s nearly $4 billion, five-year capital spending program.

“It was a long process as we went around the state trying to decide where was the best place, and it’s funny we came back here,” Carcieri told the audience crowded into the state police museum. “…It’s fitting, actually, because I think it’s a wonderful setting here and there’s a tradition and a history here.”

Said state police Lt. Col. Joseph R. Miech, “A great deal of determination, passion and dedication went into the design of this building with the hope of continuing and enhancing the reputation [of] the Rhode Island State Police …”

State officials originally wanted to have the new headquarters at the state’s John O. Pastore complex on New London Avenue in Cranston, near Rhode Island’s major highways. The facility would have included a patrol barracks and a consolidated state crime laboratory.

But the site was occupied by Mulligan’s Island Golf and Entertainment, which had a long-term lease from the state, and the cost of buying out the golf company proved to be prohibitive.

Then the Carcieri administration swung its focus to an 18-acre parcel in West Greenwich, southwest of Exit 7 on Route 95 on land set aside as a buffer for the defunct Big River Reservoir project. Environmental and water-resources advocates strongly protested, and the governor backed off.

After again failing to strike a deal for the golf center site, the administration settled on the site of the state’s Welcome Arnold homeless shelter, and tore down the building. Realizing that site remediation would be very expensive, and with inflation swelling construction costs, Col. Brendan P. Doherty, state police superintendent and now commissioner of the new state Department of Public Safety, agreed to use the North Scituate site instead.

“We recognize the times that we’re in” with huge state budget deficits, and his administration is bringing in a project at much less cost, the governor said. The $27-million price tag does not count $3 million to $4 million that was borrowed under the original bond authority and spent on the Cranston plan. Miech said some of the work product from that plan has been utilized for the final project.

The headquarters will be a three-story building of 56,384 square feet compared to the 144,000 square feet previously planned, and rather than including a barracks and a crime lab, the facility will house the E-911 office. The E-911 system, which is part of the public safety department, is now on Smith Street in North Providence.

By incorporating water savings, energy efficiency and other “green” factors, officials expect to win national certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, or LEED.

In sacrificing square footage, the state police will have a smaller training conference room/auditorium, and smaller offices, locker rooms and bathrooms.

The state police have a 39-acre campus in North Scituate that includes a structure occupied by the Rhode Island Urban Search and Rescue Team, but only 16 acres are buildable. Its most recognizable buildings front on Danielson Pike, just west of North Scituate village: a farmhouse that dates to 1794 and is used as the headquarters and a low-slung 1960s-era building with a façade consisting of decorative cement block that is known as the Investigative and Support Services Building.

The 4,000-square-foot farmhouse will be converted to its previous use as a barracks, to replace the now-closed Chepachet barracks, and the 15,000-square-foot investigative building will be demolished.

The new facility is expected to be ready for occupancy by mid-summer 2010 with the related demolition and final completion of the project in November or December.

gsmith@projo.com