Deal Reached to Open Sheriff’s Substation : Palmdale: About 60 sworn officers will be based at a shopping center. They will have more time to patrol the southern Antelope Valley.

After more than two years of discussions, Los Angeles County officials announced Monday a deal to open a sheriff’s substation in January in a Palmdale shopping center in an effort to provide residents with better service and possibly faster response times.

County officials said the leased 5,000-square-foot facility will operate around the clock and will be the base of operations for deputies who patrol Palmdale and other south Antelope Valley areas. Those deputies now work out of the sheriff’s main valley station in Lancaster, about 10 miles north.

The substation will be in the Maryott Center, a 40,000-square-foot retail complex on Palmdale Boulevard near 10th Street East, several blocks from City Hall. Residents will be able to file crime and accident reports, get fingerprinted and even obtain bicycle licenses at the facility, but arrested people still will be taken to the jail in Lancaster.

About 60 of the 230 sworn personnel in Lancaster will move to the new facility, including a lieutenant, three sergeants and about 55 deputies, Lt. Mike Aranda said.

“It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for the past several years. We’re glad to see it coming,” he said.

The substation will allow deputies more time to patrol the southern area of the valley because they will no longer have to make one or two round trips to Lancaster every shift, Aranda said. The facility might also cut down on response time, he said.

Sharon Bunn, director of facilities planning for the Sheriff’s Department, said the leased substation will operate until at least the mid-1990s, when county officials plan to build a permanent full-service station and create a separate patrol area for the south valley.

A spokeswoman for Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the Antelope Valley, said the Board of Supervisors is slated to approve the substation lease agreement Aug. 13. “We don’t expect any problems,” said Victoria Fouce, Antonovich’s assistant chief of staff.

Bunn said county officials have negotiated a five-year lease, with an optional two-year extension, for the facility. The lease will cost the county $5,0000 a month, plus utilities, to start. According to terms of the lease, the shopping center’s owner, Boulgourjian Bros. Corp., will spend up to $125,000 to tailor the facility to the specifications of the Sheriff’s Department.

County officials have budgeted $845,000 to lease and equip the facility during its lifetime, including about $160,000 for communications equipment.

Palmdale and sheriff’s officials in the Antelope Valley have been pushing for the substation since at least 1989. A series of other proposals, including using an old city-owned auditorium and trailers on city land adjacent to City Hall, fell through.

Officials in Palmdale, which has grown to more than 80,000 people, said the city deserves its own sheriff’s facility.

Sheriff’s officials said the 30-year-old Lancaster station had grown too small and was too far from parts of its nearly 1,300-square-mile service area, by far the largest in the department.