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THE NEW SIGNAL HILL POLICE STATION
SIGNAL TRIBUNE
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Building a ‘modern’ police station for a growing community JANUARY 25, 2013
Sean Belk
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Staff Writer
early a decade ago, Signal Hill City officials and community members envisioned a new “modern” police station that would be nearly twice the size of the existing station and come equipped with the latest technology, a new emergency-operations center (EOC) and enough room to accommodate a police force that has grown along with the City’s population. That vision becomes a reality next Tuesday, Jan. 29, when the Signal Hill Police Department officially relocates operations and staff from the aging nearly 13,000-square-foot building on Hill Street to a new 21,500-square-foot facility at 2745 Walnut Ave. Building a new police station from scratch, however, wasn’t an easy task, explains Signal Hill City Manager Ken Farfsing. He said the undertaking required years of planning with various community members to determine how to finance the endeavor, come up with the best location and pinpoint the police department’s needs. The nearly $20-million project also involved issuing bonds through redevelopment after a failed utility-tax measure, finishing a lengthy land-acquisition procedure through eminent domain, cleaning up oil contamination and completing the construction phase that took nearly two years after a contractor abruptly pulled out of the project. Although it’s been a long process, Farfsing said the new building is well worth the wait. “It’s not easy to build public facilities,” he said. “This is a major facility that’s going to last the city 100 years or more, and it takes time to really do it the right way… We needed a complete modernization of our police department’s facility.” Starting next week, the new police station will feature a dispatch center with state-of-the-art communications systems and an EOC that is approximately 300 square feet larger than the EOC in the old building. The new EOC enables the City to assist the community and nearby public-safety agencies and communities in emergencies and natural disasters. The EOC will also be available for community groups to use as a meeting room. In addition, the new station was built using: Art-Deco architecture to mirror City structures; environmentally friendly features, including solar panels and drought-tolerant landscaping; and the highest building-safety and seismic standards to withstand major earthquakes and other disasters. The new structure also allows for future expansion to meet the long-term needs of the police department, City officials said. A growing police force The push to build a new police station was primarily driven by an assessment of police-facility needs commissioned by WMM and Associates in 2002 that determined the Signal Hill Police Department had officially “outgrown” its police station. As the City’s population has increased from about 4,600 to 11,300 residents in the last 50 years, following substantial commercial and residential developments, Signal Hill’s police force has also grown, doubling from 25 to nearly 50 staff members, including police officers and administration. The police station on Hill Street was first built in the 1960s and then renovated in the 1970s at the Civic Center between City Hall and the Signal Hill Library. However, the building has become more and more cramped throughout the years. Farfsing said the City added six additional police officers and other personnel in the last few years that only compounded the problem. Police Chief Michael Langston said the department’s old facility no longer meets the standards of today’s police needs. For instance, emergency operations, including briefing and dispatch operations, function out of a single room that serves as the department’s EOC, while a lieutenant works out of an office the size of a “converted closet,” he said. “I have six employees who work in records, and, really, there’s only space for about three people there,” Langston said. “They can’t really sit down and do their work effectively, and that’s hampering our effectiveness and our efficiency… We don’t even have enough parking for all of our employees to park here.” He added that the old police facility is also in need of repairs, including upgrades to plumbing and air-conditioning systems and new ceiling panels due to water damage. The needs-assessment findings were studied by a 22-member Blue-ribbon committee, formed in 2004 to provide a balance of community interests on the subject. Committee members included residents, local business representatives, community leaders, City staff and Police Officers Association members.
An aerial photo shows the four-acre site of the new police station on Walnut Avenue between 27th and 28th streets during construction.
Instead of putting more money into an aging structure that was considered “undersized” even when it was first built, the committee concluded that building a new station would be the most “efficient and cost-effective” option. It was also determined that the old facility would have needed numerous upgrades to meet current public-facility building codes. Plans called for building a new facility that would accommodate a new EOC and new police technology. Anything other than a new facility was considered a “Band-Aid” solution, City staff said. “There was just so much work that needed to be done, sometimes you’re better off tearing things down and starting over,” Farfsing said.
How it was financed A major goal of the committee was to come up with a way to finance the new station. The first recommendation was to propose a temporary three-percent utility tax to fund the construction of a new station initially proposed on a site on Spud Field in the Civic Center near the existing building. That proposal eventually went on the election ballot but failed to receive a majority support from voters, Farfsing said. After regrouping, the City then decided that the best way to finance the project would be to issue bonds through the former Signal Hill Redevelopment Agency (RDA), he said. Farfsing said the police station project was one of the last redevelopment activities able to go forward before redevelopment was abolished by the State, and the funding allocation was also recognized by the State as an enforceable obligation. The redevelopment bonds raised $18 million to fund the acquisition of the site and construction of the police station. The funding also includes reimbursement of previous expenditures of approximately $1.2 million for costs associated with design, project management and legal services. Farfsing said funding the project through bonds paid off by existing property-tax-increment funds enables the City to build the station without having to pass new taxes on to residents. “It’s keeping our local property taxes local,” he said. “When people pay their property taxes in Signal Hill, they’re essentially supporting the new station, which, to me, is pretty worthwhile.”
Finding a location Finding a suitable location for the police facility was also a challenge. The City evaluated a dozen potential sites for the new police station using a series of site-selection criteria. Any potential site was required to: be located outside of the Alquist-Priolo Fault Zone; provide access to major streets to enable the police to quickly respond to calls; have “minimal” site-
development constraints, such as interference from oil well operations; be located in a “centralized easy-to-find location;” and minimize the loss of existing park land. The location of the new station eventually came down to two sites: an undeveloped threeacre site on Spring Street within the Signal Hill Auto Center, and a four-acre property located on the northwest corner of Walnut Avenue and 27th Street. In 2007, it was eventually determinded that the property on Walnut Avenue as the most suitable site for the station, due to its larger size, “centralized” location and access to major streets giving the police better response capability. Acquiring the land After settling on the four-acre site on Walnut Avenue, acquiring the land required a lengthy process, Farfsing said. The site, which was once used as a site for “concerts in the park,” had been a vacant field for decades, he said. The distressed property, however, was owned by more than 7,000 individual property owners who first purchased small parcels from oil speculators in the 1920s and set up property sales to raise money to drill oil, Farfsing said. “What happened was two wells were put on the property, and a large tank was put in, but over time, these property owners got lost,” he said. “Some perhaps were grandfathered in with a deed and never passed it on. Derricks were taken out, the big tank disappeared, and no one could really pull together ownership interests.” In the 1960s, Texaco Inc., as the unit operator of the Signal Hill West Unit, attempted to contact the numerous vested owners in an attempt to purchase the fee interest in the property but later terminated their efforts since they could only find an estimated 6.25-percent of the original deed holders, City officials said. The City then decided to use the redevelopment agency’s powers of eminent domain to condemn the property in court since the leaseholders couldn’t be located. “We did a pretty extensive check and found some additional lease holders, and we eventually ended up going to court to condemn out the property, because the deeds had disappeared” Farfsing said.
We are proud to join the City of Signal Hill in celebrating the opening of its brand-new
CITY OF SIGNAL HILL POLICE STATION
City of SH
Construction phase Construction work began on the project in November 2010. However, in February of last year, the original contractor, Irvinebased FTR International, abandoned the job, leaving no response to any of the City’s communications. Still, City officials said the work stoppage didn’t end up costing the City any money. FTR had posted a bond, as required by state law in case the company defaulted on the contract, acting as an insurance policy. Once City officials had determined that FTR had defaulted, the City formally terminated the contract and contacted the bond company– Arch Insurance, based in Philadelphia. The bond company then brought in a new general contractor, Kemp Brothers Construction, based in Santa Fe Springs, which restarted the work in May. Although the work abandonment, in addition to a heavy rain season last year, ended up delaying the project by several months, Signal Hill Deputy City Manager Charlie Honeycutt said the construction project is estimated to come in about $2.5 million under budget. In the end, he said the new station will help the police department become more efficient and now gives the City the capability to not only serve the Signal Hill community but other nearby communities in the greater region as well, while partnering with public-safety agencies from Long Beach and Los Angeles County due to the station’s proximity to the airport, the Port of Long Beach and the Port of LA. “Eventually time comes when you just need to build new facilities,” Honeycutt said. “[The new station] clearly makes a much better environment for us to help the community if there is an emergency... We’re going to be in an environment that’s a little more manageable, and it’s going to make it more efficient for us to respond.”