 |
|
|
|
|
Center discussion could stall fire district plans to build new station
Fire district says it will wait, but not indefinitely
Three plans considered
By Oakley Brooks
While the city, three local public agencies and several citizens continue to brainstorm plans for a public service center, a proper exploration of the issue may delay construction of the Saratoga Fire District's new station, according to the mayor of Saratoga.
On Sept. 5, Mayor John Mehaffey and the city council will review the fire district's plans for a new 13,000-square-foot station on the corner of Saratoga Avenue and Saratoga-Los Gatos Road.
But the council was to hear a report from City Manager Dave Anderson Aug. 15 on the progress of talks about a new public service center involving an upgraded fire station, post office and Santa Clara County Sheriff's substation near those existing facilities.
As an outgrowth of the talks, the city is considering hiring an architect to draw schematics of the proposed center, a process that could carry on well past the September review of the fire district's new station.
"If it delays building a new fire station, I think that's OK," said Mehaffey. "I'd hate to build it and then say we should have done [something else] instead."
Fire district officials, who have cooperated in conversations about the center, declared recently that they would hold off on station construction and remain at the negotiating table--to a point.
"We're not going to wait indefinitely," said Saratoga Fire District Chairman Bob Egan. "Until the city gives a proposal, I really can't say how long we'll wait."
Details of the center are still sketchy, but on August 6, interested parties narrowed their ideas on upgrading the fire district, post office and sheriff's facilities into three general plans.
One would involve constructing a combined sheriff and fire district facility on the site of the former Contempo Realty building just up Saratoga-Los Gatos Road from the current fire station. The fire district owns the Contempo building and had planned to use it as a temporary station during the construction of its new facility.
Another scenario calls for a new, larger post office and sheriff's office on the site of their current facilities and a smaller fire station on the Contempo site. A third plan allows the fire district's plans for a new station to go ahead, with a new sheriff's facility to be built on the Contempo site.
All three ideas involve the construction of a parking structure to alleviate overcrowding in a common lot the three agencies presently share.
The sheriff's substation currently borrows roughly 30 parking spaces from the nearby Saratoga Federated Church. The agencies are calling for at least 180 spaces in a new, two-level structure, incorporating the Federated Church lot, which would accommodate the agencies' needs and leave at least 50 spaces for Village shoppers.
All the proposed plans also call for a substantial increase in space for the sheriff's office, a 5,000-square-foot space leased from the neighboring U.S. Postal Service on Saratoga Avenue.
Sheriff Laurie Smith recently contacted Saratoga Postmaster Curtis Jewell by letter. She said that her operations in the West Valley had outgrown the space in the U.S. Postal Service building and that she was exploring other alternatives. The lease for the sheriff's substation space expires at the end of August 2002.
With a desire to keep the sheriff's office based in Saratoga and with the fire district's construction project pending, Mayor Mehaffey said the issues of combining facility upgrades should be looked at comprehensively.
He expressed concern that the current fire station was structurally unsound and needed to be addressed soon--an argument the fire district has used as the impetus behind its push for a new station.
But Mehaffey suggested the current fire station might be temporarily shored up to prevent seismic damage in the short term.
A contractor's 1998 estimate of minimal architectural and structural upgrades on the current station came to $474,932.
While the fire district has money for the proposed fire station, after voters approved nearly $6 million in bond money last spring, funding ideas for a larger public service center have still not taken shape.
The city has also not resolved how big a role it will take in building the center. Currently, it only owns tiny Memorial Plaza and two alleys that flow through U.S. Postal Service and fire district land.
But any construction project in the near future would have to come through the city's initiative, according to U.S Postal Service's San Jose district spokesman Guz Ruiz. The budget-crunched federal agency has frozen all new construction projects nationwide.
The city has arranged to have Sutro and Co.--which organized the city's bond package for the Saratoga library expansion--bring the funding options to the study group.
Fehr and Peers Associates will also study traffic issues brought up by the potential reorientation of the fire station and sheriff's substation. Discussions of the public safety center are open to the public and held every Monday at 10 a.m. in the city's administrative conference room, near the Civic Theatre.
|
|
|
|
Saratoga, California Since 1955
