Newport Beach leaders are looking to build a new police station next to city hall, pitching plans to get rid of a large chunk of their existing sculpture garden and spend over $160 million on the new headquarters.
Many residents are raising red flags around the plan, pointing out city council members already purchased another site on Dove Street years ago for a new police station.
Residents are also criticizing the increased cost of building next to city hall and a lack of transparency around how the project changed.
Former Mayor Keith Curry highlighted the building’s price tag as “the most expensive project in the city’s history.”
“It was developed behind closed doors without citizen input and it creates significant environmental, operational and financial problems,” Curry said in a Thursday email. “The city council needs to abandon this site and start over with a real public process.”
The shift to the civic center came after city council members met behind closed doors last year to hammer out new plans for the police station, shooting down ideas for a public committee to look at possible new homes for the police department.
While Councilman and then-Mayor Joe Stapleton pitched having members of the public included in the discussions, including making all the commission meetings public, his idea was shot down by every council member except Councilwoman Robyn Grant.
“Sometimes deals need to be made, and then you need to daylight them and that can often work better,” said Councilman Noah Blom at the council’s Oct. 14 meeting. “I enjoy the idea we get the input now. I don’t necessarily love the idea that input starts at the very beginning before we have any concrete pieces to play with.”
Now, city council members are hosting their first public discussion on the plans for the police station on Tuesday night.
Why Does the City Need a New Police Station?
While city council members haven’t made a final decision on where their new police station will go, they’re all publicly in agreement on one thing – the existing building has to go.
Built in 1973, city leaders have been discussing replacing it for nearly a decade amid concerns about its limited size, lack of electrical infrastructure and shortage of storage for things like servers and networks to handle body-worn camera videos and digital evidence.
If the city built a new police station on the existing site and moved the police department to a temporary location, city staff estimate it would add anywhere from $5 to $20 million in expenses on the project without taking into account other operational upsets according to a staff report.
City leaders landed on a property on Dove Street back in 2022 to house the new police station, but current city council members are raising concerns that its location around four miles away from city hall and the Fashion Island Mall leaves it too far away from the downtown.
“At that time, we had a different police chief and a different outlook into the rationale of why a department would be possible in the airport area of the city,” wrote Councilman Erik Weigand in a letter to the community posted on StuNews.
“With two high-profile and significant incidents occurring within months of one another at Fashion Island, it became imperative to me (and others) that we must keep our department’s headquarters in and around Newport Center,” Weigand wrote.
Instead, Councilmembers Noah Blom, Michelle Barto and Sara Weber met privately to discuss the possibility of other sites as part of an ad hoc committee according to city council minutes.
What Are the Options?
Now, council members are suggesting to either demolish a portion of the sculpture garden at city hall to make space for a new police station or to buy another nearby property in the future that could hold a new headquarters.
The option currently pushed by city leaders is to put in a new police station on the corner of Avocado Ave. and Civic Center Drive, which currently holds a chunk of the city’s sculpture garden.
City council members have highlighted that it wouldn’t cost anything to purchase the land since they already own it, and that its central location could help lower response times in the downtown area.
Blom, who served as part of the closed door discussion on a new site, praised the move as the most financially responsible option, highlighting how they could sell the land the existing police station sits on to help finance most of the construction without raising taxes.
“I don’t want to go out for a bond measure, I don’t want to put this all on taxpayers,” Blom said in a Thursday interview. “It seems like the final piece to wrap up the civic center.”
If the plan at city hall moves forward, the nine-acre sculpture garden would lose around three to four acres to the new police station, a sacrifice Blom said was worth it, pointing to the city’s plans to expand other parks and the possibility to move the sculptures there.
“I have a three year old daughter, we walk every park in this city and she does love the sculpture garden. But sometimes I have to weigh fiscal responsibility at the same spot,” Blom said. “It just seems to be the most responsible way.”
It also received support publicly from Councilmembers Robyn Grant and Weigand, who both said they wanted more details at the council’s Jan. 31 meeting.
“I want to continue looking into it,” Weigand said. “It does seem like we could save some of the sculpture garden while we do this.”
The current estimates place that site’s construction at around $162 million, but it doesn’t take into account some of the extra grading and infrastructure work that would need to occur on the site.
The Dove Street site is still an option for the new police station, and is expected to be the cheapest location at $150 million.
Buying another site surrounding the civic center would likely push the price tag for a new station to over $233 million or more.
City staff also noted in their report the city could refit the existing police station, but that the timeline would nearly double, pushing the finished project out to the 2030s.
Councilman Joe Stapleton said that while he wished there was more transparency earlier in the process, that Tuesday night’s meeting will be a good chance to hear what residents think of the plans.
“I think this is going to become one of the most expensive buildings in the history of our city,” Stapleton said in a Wednesday interview. “I do think the committee is doing a good job now getting out in the public and this will be that first opportunity.”
Councilwoman Sara Weber said she wants the police station to remain somewhere central to the city, and noted that she also wanted staff to look at ways to save the sculpture garden in a Thursday statement.
“This will be one of the most important civic investments Newport Beach makes for decades,” Weber wrote. “My responsibility is to ensure we choose the location that best serves the city operationally, financially, and from a public safety standpoint. Not simply the option with the lowest initial cost.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.