Foothill Blues : LAPD: A disruptive renovation drives police to request moving to a temporary Lake View Terrace station. But controversy dogs the chosen site.

Because of disruptions caused by construction work, officers with the Los Angeles Police Department Foothill Division asked Monday to relocate the station to a Lake View Terrace site for about 18 months while renovation is completed.

“The construction is causing havoc here,” said Foothill commander Capt. Tim McBride, as he sat in his office listening to deafening heavy machinery. “We simply cannot do our jobs here.”

McBride sent Chief Willie L. Williams a letter asking for permission to move the station to a former hospital, now owned by Phoenix House, a drug rehabilitation agency.

Police officials had originally planned for operations at Foothill to continue uninterrupted during the $5.2-million renovation, but that quickly proved impossible.

Police reports have been lost, patrol cars vandalized and suspects mistakenly released because of confusion caused by the renovation and an asbestos removal project.

The confusion has added a layer of tension at the Foothill station, which many officers worry may be the scene of violent protests if the four officers on trial in federal court for the Rodney G. King beating are again acquitted.

“We feel very vulnerable right now,” McBride said. “This is the absolute wrong time for construction.”

For about two weeks, the front desk at Foothill was actually located in a nearby trailer and citizens had to walk across muddy ground to get to the door.

“For two years, I’ve been trying to make Foothill the most user-friendly police station in the city,” McBride said. “All that has gone to hell in the past two months. . . . Crime will probably go down in Foothill because people can’t find the police station.”

The site McBride hopes to move to is an old hospital at 11600 Eldridge Ave., which is also the site of a controversial drug rehabilitation facility proposed by Phoenix House.

Phoenix House, a nonprofit group, has offered to let the police use about 10,000 square feet in one of its buildings free of charge.

But it may still cost the department more than $100,000 to move all the police equipment and change phone lines to the new building.

The facility, built in 1960, originally housed Pacoima Memorial Lutheran Hospital, which closed in the late 1970s. Currently a small nursing school is housed in one building. Most of the other buildings are used as locations for movie and television productions.

It is unclear how much it will cost for the police to move into the site, but McBride hopes it can be done for under $100,000.

No money has been budgeted for the move, which must be approved by Williams, the Police Commission and the City Council. But McBride is hoping that his proposal will receive fast-track approval.

Meanwhile, neighbors who for the past five years have fought plans by Phoenix House to establish a rehabilitation facility there were caught off guard by Foothill’s proposal.

“I think the police are being used as a pawn by Phoenix House,” said Sandy Hubbard, a co-president of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn., whose house backs up to the old hospital.

“It’s a no-win situation because if we express concerns about the Police Department, that doesn’t bode well for our community--we’ll be seen as anti-police,” Hubbard said. “If we don’t express concerns, then Phoenix House can use that against us.”

Steve Taylor, director of operations at Phoenix House, said the agency was approached by police several weeks ago and quickly offered to let Foothill use a portion of a 40,000-square-foot building. McBride said the department only needs about 10,000 square feet.

The building, which now houses a branch of Casa Loma Nursing College, would eventually be used as offices and dormitories by Phoenix House. Taylor said that letting police use the site would not disrupt his agency’s plans.

“It’s going to take us a couple years to get everything in place anyway,” he said.

McBride said he has been considering moving the division for about three weeks, but no site appeared feasible until officers thought of the old hospital.

For rank-and-file officers and detectives, the move could not come soon enough. Now they cannot park their personal cars at the station and instead are leaving them at an undisclosed location in Pacoima. Nor is there any room to park patrol cars at Foothill between shifts and many officers must park illegally while taking in suspects. But officers must still take their cars to Foothill to refuel. McBride estimates each officer and detective spends about an hour a day dealing with car hassles.

“This is absolutely the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” said one veteran officer, who asked not to be named. “Right now, it’s a hassle, but someone could get hurt or a suspect could try to escape and it could be really dangerous.”