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A plan to build a costly new police and fire headquarters sailed through a Mountain View City Council meeting Tuesday evening with little discussion, apart from a few remarks that the project would demolish an existing historical building.
In a unanimous vote, the City Council certified an environmental impact report for a new public safety facility at 1000 Villa St., which was projected to cost $189 million, as of a year ago.
“This is something the city has been talking about for over 20 years,” Mayor Ellen Kamei said at the Nov. 4 council meeting. “We have people who are here to provide public safety, who are in an unsafe building themselves.”
For years, the city has been planning to build a new police and fire administration building, as the current one is aging and not up to seismic safety standards. The project would replace the existing facility with an enlarged 75,000 square-foot building, including additions like a 15-lane shooting range on top of a garage.
The Nov. 4 meeting was another step in the long process of getting the project formally approved. A state law – known as the California Environmental Quality Act – requires that the city evaluate and disclose the impacts of the project and adopt mitigation measures for it, while also making a report accessible for the public to weigh in on.
The environmental impact report presented to the City Council Tuesday evening described a number of “significant” impacts associated with the construction of a new police building, like air and noise pollution. However, the report also noted that these impacts could be mitigated so that they would be “less than significant.”
There was just one category in the report that was described as having a significant and unavoidable impact: the demolition of a “historical resource.”
The original police station was designed by Goodwin Steinberg, a local architect of international acclaim. The report describes the building as illustrative of Steinberg’s large-scale civic work, combining a dramatic architectural style with Spanish colonial revival elements. Despite being less than 50 years old, the building has been recommended for addition to the state register of historic resources.
At the Nov. 4 meeting, city staff summarized the findings of the report, including a proposal to demolish the existing police station but preserve its history with written documents, drawings and photographs.
Council members backed the proposed mitigation measures and expressed support for the public safety building more broadly.
Council member Alison Hicks said that she was in favor of the project, but also advocated to preserve more of the historical significance of the original building by incorporating elements of it in future public art installations at the site.
“I think we’ve held other private developers to higher standards regarding historic preservation, and I think we have the leeway to hold ourselves to higher standards here in particular,” Hicks said.
The City Council supported Hick’s proposal, which was incorporated into a motion certifying the environmental impact report.
Mountain View resident Serge Bonte said in a letter to the council that the city appeared to be applying a different standard to its own projects, compared to those of private developers. The letter referred specifically to the city’s historic preservation ordinance update, which could potentially ban redevelopment on private properties deemed historically significant.
“It does feel that the city has a different set of rules or standards for private properties than for itself,” Bonte wrote.
Alexander Brooks, another public commenter, expressed concern that a new public safety building would negatively impact Black and brown communities while diverting funding from critical needs like housing, education and health care services.
“It seems so absurd to be dedicating something like $200 million to a project of this scope,” Brooks said. “I really encourage you to be more creative and more in tune with real communities’ needs.”
The council report did not provide an update on the estimated cost of the public safety building or financing strategies but noted that a comprehensive funding plan would be presented to the City Council in December.
Last year, voters passed a measure to raise the property transfer tax on residential and commercial properties that sell for more than $6 million, which at the time was expected to add about $9.5 million annually to the city’s coffers. The actual amount will vary based on the real estate market. About 35%-40% of the proceeds have been set aside to help fund the public safety building, with revenue also coming from an annual ground lease, sales tax proceeds and a hotel tax from an agreement with the Ameswell Hotel.
