Opinion: New cop shop is tops!

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The construction of the Los Angeles Police Department’s new headquarters, across Spring Street from the L.A. Times, has been a constant source of argument in downtown circles. Is it moving too slow or too fast? Is it a prime example of runaway costs or a model of smart architecture?

For me, the LAPD’s next building has special meaning, because it was instrumental in the creation of our Blowback feature. Though we had used the web once before to get a response to an Opinion piece from the late Jack Valenti (the last true gentleman), it was the brouhaha between L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez and LAPD HQ contractor Ron Tutor that really proved the feature could work. After Lopez penned a column (now disappeared from the site) criticizing the project’s leisurely pace, standing-around workers and rising expenses, I figured Tutor — who blew up on the phone with Lopez but seemed to have a coherent critique of the media that he was on the verge of expressing — would be interested in replying. He delivered, a new feature was born, and you can judge for yourself how well Tutor acquitted himself.

I’m no fan of big, taxpayer-funded buildings under any circumstances, and I’ve seen a few workers standing around doing nothing (though no more than I see at any workplace, including my own), but I do have to say that for a building that’s not scheduled to open until 2009, the LAPD headquarters already looks pretty impressive.

In fact, the only cause for alarm I found while skulking around the project and photographing odds and ends recently was that I briefly got a strong sense of: ‘Gee, I’m glad I’m not Greg!’

Then again, don’t we all (except for the Gregs among us) get that feeling from time to time?

I’m not sure what the standard of success is when measuring massive public construction projects paid for through our taxes in a city where even the dogs and cats are unionized. I’m not sure there can even be a standard of success in that environment. And I guess anybody would view with dismay a building that will end up blotting out the sun in your second-floor office. But from what I can see, when (or if) the LAPD building gets completed, it will be a pretty nice place to be a cop: