Despite all the rain in recent months, construction at the site of Gainesville’s future Public Safety Facility is going along just swimmingly.

City officials say the future headquarters of Gainesville’s police, fire and municipal court should be completed on schedule by next June.

Construction of the new Public Safety Facility will make way for a multistory hotel and office development in place of the current police and fire station on Jesse Jewell Parkway.

But for Gainesville’s police and fire chiefs, the construction of the new building means employees can work in offices that were not originally intended as closets.

The city’s police and fire departments have long outgrown the current building, designed 35 years ago to house 40 employees. Today, the two departments have approximately 120 employees.

When it is complete, the new $20 million facility will include two buildings on a 13-acre site near the Public Utilities Department on Queen City Parkway.

Police Chief Frank Hooper and Fire Chief Jon Canada rib each other good-naturedly about the project. On a recent tour of the construction site with the Gainesville City Council, the two joked that Hooper had plans to install a hot tub.

But on a serious note, the new facility is a much-needed expansion for departments that have been crowded for years, with a few perks thrown in for investigators.

The new building will have a laboratory, four rooms specifically designated for interviewing suspects, and another interview room specially designed for interviewing victims of sexual assault.

Fire fighters will also get much needed relief from overcrowding with their new 26,000-square-foot facility, but residents might be the ones best served by the fire station’s new location.

Traffic on Jesse Jewell creates problems for firefighters trying to get to emergencies from their current location; the new station will allow easier access to and from Queen City Parkway, improving the department’s emergency response time, Canada has said.

Hall County voters approved a six-year, 1 percent sales tax, the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, on March 17 that will pay for the $20.4 million facility along with several infrastructure projects across the county.