GILROY
– The City Council will be asked to approve more money than the
$19.2 million previously allocated to build the city’s new police
department headquarters – a building that will come complete with a
1,485-square foot training/weight room and full-size running
track.
Due in large part to the rising price of steel along with other
unforeseen expenses, the cost to build the state-of-the-art,
49,000-square-foot facility scheduled to open in December 2004 will
exceed previous estimates.
The exact amount of money, however, will not be released until
the year’s capital improvement budget is presented to Council in
early February said Bill Headly, Gilroy’s facilities and parks
development manager who is overseeing the project for the city.
GILROY – The City Council will be asked to approve more money than the $19.2 million previously allocated to build the city’s new police department headquarters – a building that will come complete with a 1,485-square foot training/weight room and full-size running track.
Due in large part to the rising price of steel along with other unforeseen expenses, the cost to build the state-of-the-art, 49,000-square-foot facility scheduled to open in December 2004 will exceed previous estimates.
The exact amount of money, however, will not be released until the year’s capital improvement budget is presented to Council in early February said Bill Headly, Gilroy’s facilities and parks development manager who is overseeing the project for the city.
“The figure has changed – it’s going to be a higher cost, that’s all I can tell you,” said Headly. “The cost of steel is up 35 percent since we made the original presentation to Council (in June 2001). There have also been a significant number of site costs that were part of the original scope – parking, sanitary and sewer issues.”
Although groundbreaking on the station is not expected until April, the fact that the station’s primary structure will be made almost entirely of steel is already casting a dark cloud over the project’s budget. And while the demolition of seven city-purchased houses on Dowdy and Hanna streets between Sixth and Seventh streets making way for the station has been completed under cost, the city is finding problems with existing sewer lines in the area.
“Some of these things you just don’t know until you get there,” Headly said. “This is the perfect example of ‘Project Creep’: When you try to keep tax costs down for a project and therefore there is not a lot of budget leeway.”
According to current estimates, Gilroy’s new facility will cost more than double the cost of Morgan Hill’s new police headquarters which is also being planned.
Although a location for the Morgan Hill building has not yet been selected by Morgan Hill City Council, a report by the city estimated costs for a new construction of the planned 43,300 square-foot building to be $8.4 million. Currently $6.7 million is budgeted for a new police facility in the Morgan Hill Capital Improvement Budget.
“I don’t know that much about their plan, but I do know they aren’t planning the parking we are,” Brown said. “I also know they’re looking at building in vacant industrial and moving away from the city core. We looked at taking over vacant industrial, but the costs were too much.
“More importantly, we learned through our discussions before planning our department that keeping the headquarters in an easily accessible part of the city was essential to serve our citizens. We are confident this new building will be a benefit to the entire community.”
The $19.2 million earmarked for the station will come from money generated the last decade through the city’s developmental impact fees, which are used to fund most of the city’s capital improvement budget.
Aside from the new police station, the $18.3 million planned new library, the $2.3 million third fire station and the renovations to the Seventh Street administration offices are on the capital improvement budget schedule. The library is still hoping to receive at least $11 million of its funding from a state grant, although its request was rejected during the grant’s first round of competition in October.
City Administrator Jay Baksa is currently completing the city’s 2003 Capital Improvement Budget which will provide current information on any possible available funding for the police facility.
“You never know what the true cost is until the bills come in,” said GPD Assistant Chief Lanny Brown, who is overseeing the project for the GPD. “We made some decisions early on in the process where we decided that we wanted this station done right, our community deserves that.”
When the new station at 7301 Hanna St. is complete, it will be more than double the size of the circa 1965 department’s current 19,000-square feet. The main floor of the station will include everything from meeting rooms to offices to evidence storage to a gym. The top floor of the station equipped with bullet proof walls will be designated for police dispatch and the bottom two floors will contain 260 parking spaces that will be used by all Civic Center employees.
Included Amenities in the new department will be a temporary jail that can hold up to 22 people; a 1,536-square- foot community meeting room – something the current department lacks; a 1,485-square foot training/weight room for the officers who currently are forced to work out next door at the Wheeler Community Center; and a full-size running track.
A 75-foot tall clock tower northeast of the building will also house the station’s 36-foot tall radio antenna. The tower is a tribute to the clock on the Old City Hall on Sixth and Monterey streets.
“This building is going to be centered around the community,” Brown said of the ‘modernized mission look’ the stucco building will try to capture. “The parking garage is going to be used to free up surface parking for anyone coming to use any office in the Civic Center.”
The new police department is only the first phase in the Gilroy Civic Center Master Plan, which will include the new public library, City Hall expansion and renovation, Senior Center expansion, Wheeler Community Center expansion and other Civic Center campus improvements. When complete by 2039, the Civic Center will cover 327,196 square feet – compared with its 91,065 current square feet – and cost an estimated $50 to $70 million.
