Gilroy
– The drab blue that covers the floors and some walls of the
police station will be replaced by pleasant shades of beige,
burgundy, and brown.
Gilroy Police Department Assistant Chief Lanny Brown is in the
process of designing the furniture that will go in the new police
station, which is under construction at Hanna and Seventh streets
and is scheduled to open next spring.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – The drab blue that covers the floors and some walls of the police station will be replaced by pleasant shades of beige, burgundy, and brown.
Gilroy Police Department Assistant Chief Lanny Brown is in the process of designing the furniture that will go in the new police station, which is under construction at Hanna and Seventh streets and is scheduled to open next spring.
“One premise is that we’re taking as much as we can from this building into the new one,” Brown.
That includes some of the stand-alone desks and chairs used by command-level staff that are in “pretty good shape and usable,” he said. What will be left behind and sold to the building’s new tenant is the furniture in many of the smaller offices, such as desks that are fitted into corners and designed to work with the contours of the room.
“It doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense to tear all that down and take it over into other rooms that it doesn’t fit into,” Brown said.
Custom-designed modified cubicles are being created for some of the open workspaces that will be used by groups of officers, including detectives, the Neighborhood Resources Unit and the Anti-Crime Team.
“In our environment, they need to have a semi-private workspace where they can get on the phone and … not bug each other. But because there’s so much collaborative work going on, they need to be able to push back and talk with each other and compare notes,” Brown said.
The department bypassed the formal bidding process and will purchase furniture at a discounted price through a General Services Administration schedule. The contract allows the GPD to purchase Maxon office furniture at a 68 percent discount, and save money by bypassing the formal bid process. Brown said the colors inside the $27.7 million, 48,900-square-foot station will have a southwestern feel, with various shades of brown, burgundy and green.
The furniture – including desks, seats, filing cabinets, tables, lounge seating, and other products – will be purchased from Palace Art and Office Supply based in Santa Cruz.
“We have a really good customer service (experience) with them,” Brown said.
The company recently furnished the city’s corporation yard.
Besides officers’ workspaces, Palace will provide televisions and projectors for briefings, plus furnishings for eight conference rooms, meeting rooms, the lobby, and interview rooms. One interview room will be no-frills, one will have a more homey feel, and another will be designed to make children comfortable, Brown said.
The cost of the furniture will not exceed $300,000, according to a memo provided to City Council.
“I believe it’s going to come in significantly less than that,” Brown said, “but we don’t know until we really do an assessment of what we’re going to be able to take and what we’re going to be able to leave behind.”
Also going inside the new station will be brand-new computers and phone systems. The replacement cycle for the GPD’s computers is coinciding with the move, said David Chulick, the city’s Information Technology director.
“The current models that they have are a year past their replacement schedule,” he said. “Most of the equipment over there is at least 4 years old or older.”
The station will be stocked with Dell computers, although Chulick has not yet done a survey to determine how many. Most of the printers and other computer equipment have longer life expectancy and will be moved to the new station, he said.
For the phone system, the city is looking to replace the current phones in all its departments, and will ask phone vendors for proposals shortly, Chulick said. Currently, Pacific Design Engineering, an independent consulting firm is researching and developing the requirements for the new system.
“We interviewed many independent phone consultants – they’re not tied to a vendor … this is not the San Jose fiasco,” Chulick said, referring to that city’s contract that required the use of Cisco Systems products.
The city’s phone hub will be housed in the police station because it will have sufficient emergency power to keep the phones working in a critical situation.
As the steel structure of the two-story station progresses, the floor of the second story is not far behind, Brown said. Work continues on the jail area near the east side of the building, and the locker rooms. The officers’ fitness area, when finished, will be equipped by the Police Officers’ Association, Brown said. The association will put between $20,000 and $30,000 in weights and fitness machines in the room. Officers do not have a workout space in the existing station.
Construction on the new station began last September, and was at times delayed by heavy rain this winter. The city put the station out to bid in 2003, and for a second time in 2004 when the first round of bids came in too high. The lowest bid still came in at $26 million, or $8 million higher than expected. The total price tag now stands at $27.7 million.
The Northern California city of Rocklin earlier this month unveiled a new, 40,000-square-foot police station that cost $13 million.
