The Mountain View City Council voted Tuesday night to approve early design plans for the city’s new public safety building, an expensive project that's expected to cost between $160 and $165 million and may need a ballot measure to get over the finish line.

City officials have long sought to renovate or replace the public safety building at 1000 Villa Street. The building that houses the city’s police department operations, fire department administrative staff, emergency dispatch (the 911 call center) and emergency operations center, was built over 40 years ago and does not meet current seismic standards.

The existing building design has been problematic for years, with an inflexible structure and plenty of leaks, glare and heat problems.

Further faults in the aging building became even more apparent during the intense rainy season this past winter. At the city’s annual update held on March 31, City Manager Kimbra McCarthy said the facility’s basement floor flooded several times, which put the city’s 911 call center and emergency operations center at risk.

“It has been apparent for many, many years that the city needs to build a new public safety building,” McCarthy said at the annual update.

How the city plans to fund the new building is still up in the air, though there have been talks to implement a tax revenue measure on the November 2024 ballot to cover a large portion of the cost.

Though the plans won approval at the June 27 meeting, there were some concerns related to the building’s design – including vehicle access and room for growth – which will be doctored up in the final design concept and anticipated to be reviewed by council in early 2024.

The city estimates that the project will begin construction in March 2025 and be completed in late 2027.

The city has been in talks to overhaul the current facility for two decades now, but construction costs have risen dramatically over time. When the city looked at pursuing a similar design in 2014, city officials said construction would cost $65 million. In 2021, that number jumped to $134 million. Now, the bill is looking to be upward of $160 million.

The approved conceptual design involves constructing a three-story, approximately 68,000-square-foot building – 51% larger than the current facility – and a 2.5-story parking garage with nearly 100 additional parking spots.

This plan to expand the size of the facility was based on studies from 2002 and 2010, both of which concluded the existing facility required “significant seismic retrofit work and expansion.”

At the Tuesday meeting, council members asked Public Works staff to further study how many police and fire department personnel will be needed over the next 50 or so years to ensure that the building can accommodate any growth. Prior studies only looked at staffing needs through 2030.

“Who knows when we will have the opportunity to redo this building? Certainly not in my lifetime,” Council member Lisa Matichak said. “Let's make sure we're really planning for the future here and not be penny wise and pound foolish.”

Council members voiced concerns about the design not having an alternative exit to the parking garage in case of emergency. Representatives from both the fire and police departments agreed it would be a valuable addition.

Council members also debated the architectural aesthetic of the building. Matichak said the conceptual design looked too much like an “office,” rather than a city building with “permanence” and “gravitas,” like City Hall or the library, for instance.

“Let’s take a look at some other alternatives for the architecture,” Matichak said.

Regardless of the architectural choices set to be made, all council members appeared to agree on the project’s time sensitivity, particularly with rising construction costs and the building remaining seismically unsound.

“I feel an immediate sense of urgency in doing something as soon as possible,” Council member Ellen Kamei said.