Nearly complete Gilroy Police Department looks ‘out of place’ to
its neighbors
Gilroy – Down the street from the new Gilroy Police Department, a 58-year-old woman squints at the 103,000-square-foot, $26-million colossus, now nearing completion.
“It’s huge,” said the woman, a resident of Dowdy Street. She declined to give her name, afraid of offending police. Shaking her head, she added, “It just doesn’t look proper here, in this neighborhood.”
Complaints like hers have dogged the police department. A newspaper columnist compares the building to a fortress. A letter-to-the-editor calls it “an out-of-place monster.” In 2004, as city officials reviewed design plans, critics dubbed it a police “Taj Mahal.” But police say the building, more than twice the size of their 41-year-old headquarters on Rosanna Street, is long overdue, and will save the city in the long term.
“There’s more value for your dollar if you build in today’s dollars, versus future dollars,” explained Assistant Chief Lanny Brown, co-construction manager of the project. The building should last 50 years or more, he added, and is projected to accommodate future population – and police department – growth. To Brown, that’s a beautiful thing – even if the building isn’t.
“I don’t necessarily think that it’s ugly,” Brown said, “but it does have a fortress-like look to it.”
Those towering walls mask 55,000 square feet of ground-level parking. It may not be pretty, said Brown, but it’s better for neighbors than pushing parking onto the streets, and cheaper than digging a garage underground, as architects had originally planned. Five million cheaper, to be exact.
“We didn’t want to be building a fortress,” Brown said, “but the money wasn’t there.”
The smell of fresh paint fills the building, now 98 percent complete. Cleanly-lettered signs label interview rooms, cells and offices. As he walks from room to room, pointing out features such as workout space, incandescent splash lighting, and a biological dry-room for serum-based evidence, Brown exclaims, “God, I’m loving this.”
The new headquarters features high-tech facilities alongside human touches, such as a community meeting space and a kid-friendly mural in a juvenile interview room. It’s a far cry from the current building, where officers on the graveyard shift steal sleep on the locker room couch, and where Cpl. Geoff Guerin once couldn’t find room for a single filing cabinet.
As Brown shows him new, wide police lockers with outlets, Guerin beams. At the Rosanna Street office, officers have to power up their radios and flashlights at home. When they forget to bring them back, Guerin said, other officers’ radios curiously disappear.
“You get e-mails asking, ‘Could someone please return my flashlight?’ ” said Brown, chuckling.
Only an errant trail of graffiti, snaking alongside a central stairwell, fails to elicit his approval. Recently, a vandal broke in and spray-painted a handful of interior walls.
Construction should wrap up by Nov. 17, said Brown. At that point, the department will spend one or two weeks on a “walk-through,” evaluating the completed building before computers and phones are installed, checked and double-checked: a six to eight week process. In March, Brown said, the building will be dedicated and opened to the community for tours, before opening officially a week later.
The building’s price tag is still $26 million, give or take a million, said Brown, but costs could creep higher if the city has to foot the bill for construction snafus such as moldy panels and bungled roofing. In May, city officials spotted moldy sheet-rock at the site; last December, inspectors found a fourth of the roof incorrectly installed. Thus far, the city hasn’t paid a penny for the $800,000 in replaced panels and $100,000 roofing blunder. But contractor SJ Amoroso disputes those costs, said Brown, and could file a claim at the end of the job, demanding compensation for the repairs.
“There are ongoing, productive discussions,” Brown said. “But we won’t know the final [budget] numbers until some time after we move in here.”
In the meantime, Brown inhales the scent of fresh paint, and anxiously waits for move-in day.
