GILROY
– In order to trim $6 million from a $26 million sticker price,
Gilroy’s future police station may lose the second level of a
260-space underground parking garage and its decorative second
story which would have held the department’s communications
center.
GILROY – In order to trim $6 million from a $26 million sticker price, Gilroy’s future police station may lose the second level of a 260-space underground parking garage and its decorative second story which would have held the department’s communications center.
City Council gave the go-ahead to architects Monday night to draw new designs for the 48,500-square-foot police facility some scoffingly have called the Gilroy Taj Majal. Council stopped short, however, of slashing the project’s $650,000 architectural focal point – a freestanding communications/clock tower and a vehicular roundabout.
“If it saves hundreds of thousands of dollars that’s a lot of money, but if it takes away all the character of a community building then I’m not sure I’m for it,” Councilman Al Pinheiro said. “We want some character to the facility.”
Rancho Cucamonga-based WLC Architects will now draw up plans to keep the existing communications tower in use. The firm will also draw plans putting the communications center on the main floor where a locker room would have gone. The locker room either will be reduced in size, placed elsewhere or added on during 2030 expansions.
This part of the redesign represents $2 million of the $6 million savings. At Monday night’s study session, Council looked at seven proposals that collectively could trim more than $8 million from the cost of the police station, bringing the project under its $19.2 million budget.
The cost-cutting maneuvers are part of a four-and-a-half-month scrambling effort by the architects and city officials to get the cost of the future police station closer to original estimates.
WLC initially estimated the station’s cost at $17,835,000, even though bids received from all other companies priced the project at more than $26 million. WLC attributed a rushed three-month bid process and complicated design elements, including the parking garage, for the significant price difference.
In a face-saving maneuver, WLC has agreed to absorb the $776,900 cost for the redesign, although that figure excludes the cost of city staff time that will be spent on the effort.
The police station will be built on two acres of city land southwest of the current City Hall, where seven city-owned houses south of Sixth Street between Dowdy and Hanna streets have already been demolished for the construction. The master plan calls for the current police building to be used as a City Hall annex.
The police station was originally scheduled to open in December 2004 but now is projected to take until March 2007 to complete.
Council rejected on Monday an idea to redesign the police station without a jail. The idea would have saved the city another $1.6 million on the project, but nearly half of the savings would have been lost in an upgrade of the existing holding facilitiesat the current police station.
Assistant Police Chief Lanny Brown told Council the idea would also cost $125,000 per year in staffing costs. Since the jail would be separate from the new facility, three guards would need to be on duty, taking money for street cops out of the operational budget.
The plan would also have stymied the City Hall expansion, City Administrator Jay Baksa said.
“One of the biggest disadvantages is you eliminate a short-term City Hall expansion, because you can’t put the Community Services Department into a building with a jail,” Baksa said.
The architect and project manager, Bill Little of Gilroy-based Harris & Associates, will bring the redesign back to Council on Nov. 17. Once the plans are approved, a Council with potentially three newly elected members will have to rework the overall Civic Center master plan which slated the underground garage for additional city parking.
Aside from the police station and accompanying underground parking structure, the expected $70 million Civic Center Master Plan will be built out during the next 30 years and include a new public library, City Hall expansion and renovation, senior center expansion and Wheeler Community Center expansion.
“Now you’re going to have to look at parking opportunities within future (Civic Center) projects,” said Little after Council OK’d scrapping the second level of the underground garage.
Ideas to make up for the lost spaces are sketchy, but for now they include using city-owned land to build a parking structure. City officials are leery of relying on streets around the Civic Center to meet parking needs.
