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1992 Bond Project Projected to be completed one year early
 In 2002, Los Angeles voters passed Proposition Q, a $600 million Public Safety Bond Program, to fund the upgrade, expansion, and construction of six police stations, fire and bomb-squad facilities, a detention center and a downtown L.A. emergency operations fire/dispatch center.
At the time, opponents of the proposition argued that the city wouldn’t fulfill its part of the bargain, and that it would take years to see any progress on construction. However Prop. Q program manager Sam Tanaka is happy to prove the nay sayers wrong. According to Tanaka, the projects are not only within budget (in spite of the rising costs of construction materials), but also ahead of schedule. Best of all, he says, they will all be completed in 2008, one year early.
The $34.7 million Harbor Area Replacement Police Station funded by Prop Q is approximately halfway completed, noted Mary Woo, the City’s Project Manager for the facility. The police station consists of a two-story, 50,000 sq ft police station, a 16,000 sq ft jail with 60 beds, a 40,000 sq ft parking garage that is four stories high and a 7,000 sq ft vehicle maintenance facility. Construction began on the facility in August 2005 and will be completed in December of next year.
“The men and women Building Trades continue to demonstrate the value of using Union labor,” said Richard Slawson, Executive Secretary of the Los Angeles and Orange Counties Building Trades and Construction Council. “The Harbor area is getting a great new police station and the tax payers get a project that is coming in on time and on budget.” General Contractor Pinner Construction is working under a Project Labor Agreement that was negotiated by the Building Trades Craft Unions and the City of Los Angeles for this project.
Neighborhood outreach was a particularly important part of the design process for the new, un-Barney Miller-style police stations. “The community was deeply involved, and the architecture and engineering firms really listened to what they said,” Tanaka notes. The city hosted 50 public meetings in which community members offered ideas and expressed concerns about access to the facilities as well as security.
Partly due to that input, the fortress-like aesthetic and function of the previous stations were replaced with more contextual designs, incorporating such features as public meeting rooms, open lobbies, small parks, and outdoor plazas. Some facilities even added public gardens.
The Los Angeles Police Department also took a keen interest in the design of its new facility.
Officer Chris Carson explains that, while the department’s architectural goal is to maximize safety and efficiency, it is interested in establishing a friendlier connection with neighborhoods using more site-specific and open facilities.
 The L.A. office of Perkins & Will included open green spaces in the Harbor Area Station and Jail.
In San Pedro, green-thumb locals expressed their desire for a community garden, so the architects incorporated one into the Harbor Station site, near a grove of mature eucalyptus trees and adjacent to two memorial gardens – one for officers, the other for victims of September 11.
In addition to establishing a sense of “place,” all new stations are required to achieve design excellence, as set by the Cultural Affairs Commission, and a minimum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).
LEED points are earned by integrating sustainable materials and energy-saving mechanical and electrical systems, among other prerequisites.
A public-art component must also be part of the buildings or on site.
“No more fortresses,” Seierup says. “This is good for the community, but it’s also good for the city.”
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