Model of City's new public safety facility

COUNCIL APPROVES BID FOR FIRST PHASE OF NEW SANTA MONICA POLICE AND FIRE HQ

Carolanne Sudderth

Mirror Staff Writer

Although voters rejected a bond issue to cover its funding in 1996. The Santa Monica City Council voted to begin the first phase of the construction of a new Public Safety Facility at its June 8 meeting, awarding a contract for $2,227,500 (plus contingencies) for excavation and utility relocation to Ford E.C., Inc.

The new 118,000-square-foot building will be located behind Santa Monica City Hall and extend all the way to Fourth Street. At the same time, a new street, Olympic Drive, connecting Main Street to Fourth Street, will be constructed adjacent to the new facility to give the police direct access to the Santa Monica freeway.

Total cost for the entire project is estimated at $43.7 million with an additional $3.25 million allotted for furniture and fixtures.

In 1994, voters approved a Civic Center Specific Plan design which included the Public Safety Facility. But when a general obligation bond issue to fund the building appeared on the ballot in November 1996, approval fell short of the two-thirds majority required for passage, receiving 62.5% approval. In January 1997, the Council gave the development of the Public Safety facility top priority and in February of that year, approved a funding plan that included the issuance of lease-revenue bonds.

According to Mike Dennis, Santa Monica’s director of finance, "What the council did was say ‘Obviously a majority of the citizens wanted this.’"

Dennis defined a general obligation bond as an agreement by voters to tax themselves by levying an additional property tax and, as such, requires approval by two-thirds of the electorate, while lease revenue bonds need

only the approval of a Council majority. "People buy bonds and over a period of time, probably 20 years, interest and principal would be repaid from general city revenues—just like on a home mortgage," Dennis said.

The second floor of the new building will house the Fire Department administration office and the emergency operations communications center (911). The remaining four floors and the two subterranean levels will be devoted to police operations, including a two-story 93-bed jail and a 100-foot underground firing range.

According to the City staff report, the current police station is outmoded in numbers of ways, ranging from lack of compliance with the American Disabilities Act to undersized labs to multiple entrances (which render the building difficult to secure), and too small for current operations.

The report cites the Northridge earthquake as highlighting the need for centralized services "and coordinating the activities of all city public safety and law enforcement operations."

Clad in beige precast concrete with sandstone facings in the front, the new building will be 56 feet high, four stories of which will be above grade. Two subterranean levels will house police emergency vehicles. The main entrance will be on the south side of the building.

A public plaza will parallel 4th Street and will be built around the upper element of a water sculpture in which a sheet of water will flow across granite and then cascade into an aquatic plant-filled pool on the lower level on grade with the current Avenida Mazatlan.

The use of sandstone on the exterior will be repeated in the building's two-story lobby, the ceiling of which will rise an additional story to create a 3-story atrium to permit "extensive natural light."

Two art works by project architect Michael Davis will be featured in the lobby—a skylight which, according to the Staff Report "casts a blue line of light into different parts of the lobby, depending on the time of day and time of year." and "light walls that are sequenced to create a subtle transition of gradient light."

In keeping with Santa Monica’s recently instituted green-power policies, natural resource-saving energy sources will be incorporated into the structure. Solar energy panels built into the atrium skylights will supply more than 20,000 kilowatt hours to the building annually. Recycled, treated storm-drain water (gray water) will be used instead of potable water in the toilets and urinals as well as for landscape irrigation and in the water feature.

The excavation and construction will have a direct effect on adjacent portions of Santa Monica’s urban forest. Fourteen mature trees (eight eucalyptus and six carob) have been deemed "poor candidates for transplanting," according to the staff report and will be removed. Re-configuration of the Civic Auditorium parking lot will require the re-location of four New Zealand Christmas trees and 13 ficus. They will be moved to new sites within that parking area and 86 new trees will be planted in the area.