In just a few years, officers at the 40th Precinct Station in Mott Haven will be able to enjoy a rock climbing wall and rooftop garden in between their regular policing duties, all within the confines of a futuristic, fortress-like new building that's costing the city upwards of $50 million.

Currently located at 257 Alexander Avenue, the station will move about a mile northeast to what's now a vacant lot at the intersection of East 149th Street and St. Ann's Avenue. The new station will be designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, who's also designing skyscrapers Two World Trade Center and The Spiral, and is set to cost $58,121,294, according to Mayor de Blasio's latest budget. For reference, the three other NYPD stationhouses budgeted for facelifts—the 110th precinct in Flushing, the 66th precinct in Borough Park, and the 70th precinct in Kensington—are budgeted at approximately $10 million each.

And according to an investigation by The Daily News, the redesign could have cost nearly half as much, had the city stuck with its original plan. The city reportedly began planning the redesign in 2008, and hired Karlsberger Architecture and Alexander Gorlin for a project that would have cost $29 million.

But the plan was put on hold during the 2008 financial crisis, and the contract expired after three years. Then in 2013, Bjarke Ingels was selected to design the new station (and his plans were approved by the city's Public Arts Commission last week, the News reports). Meanwhile, the city had to pay nearly $1 million to the originally hired architects for their unused (and considerably less flashy) design, pictured below.

Gorlin, one of the architects of the originally proposed building, expressed his disgust with the new design in an interview with the Daily News: "With what’s going on between the police and the community, they put forth something that looks like a bunker? ...I think it’s a waste of money and time from every angle."

To Ingels's credit, his design does include a community meeting room, which he says would be the first such facility in an NYC precinct station. That room would be intended for workshops, classes, and other such community events. Where most of the station (other than the ground level) will be walled off with windowless gunmetal, that room's walls will have dozens of tiny round windows, creating a hole-punched effect that Ingels writes will "allow...for transparency that is essential to the NYPD's plans for this new kind of public space."

That said, a $58 million-plus facility in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city—according to census data, nearly 60 percent of Mott Haven residents make less than $25,000 per year—doesn't exactly come off as the most community-enhancing project. And that's on top of how strikingly out of place the stacked silver building will be in a neighborhood comprised nearly entirely of brick buildings.

According to the city's Department of Design and Construction, the "bunker"—which DDC shows as occupying the entire block between East 149th Street, Brook Avenue, Westchester Avenue, and St. Ann's Avenue—is expected to be completed by late September, 2018. However, the Daily News reports that 2019 is more likely, and the squad's commanding officer said last summer that it could be as late as 2022. Construction is expected to start early next year.