Station to Station : Modern New Simi Police Headquarters Will Improve Comfort, Effectiveness

If you squint and use a little imagination, you can almost see a $12.7-million state-of-the-art police station at Tapo Canyon Road and Alamo Street.

There’s the gleaming dispatch room. Around the corner are the squad and computer rooms. Farther away sit the holding cells.

By the end of next year, no daydreaming should be needed.

As long as El Nino cooperates, Simi Valley’s 120 police officers could move into the new facility in late July or early August. If rains slow construction, Police Chief Randy Adams is banking on a November or December move-in date, at the latest.

Construction is well underway. The two-story building’s hulking steel skeleton looms next to City Hall. The concrete foundation has been poured. Electricians and plumbers are doing their thing.

On Wednesday, after months of uncertainty, the building’s financing was solidified when the Federal Emergency Management Agency finally agreed to contribute $3.8 million toward the project, which will replace an aging, crowded, earthquake-damaged structure on nearby Cochran Street.

“Doesn’t it look great?” remarked Mayor Greg Stratton on Wednesday. “It’s really coming along.”

Said Lt. Neal Rein, who has overseen construction of the station: “This is the largest and newest police station in this county. Nothing even comes close to it.”

During a recent tour of the current, cluttered station--vintage 1971--Rein pointed out that the contrasts between the old and new facilities will be significant.

More than a decade ago, the police force outgrew the current station--25,000 square feet of work space in two buildings.

In some hallways of the present station, officers cannot walk two abreast without hitting their batons on doorknobs. Some rooms offer five desks for 20 officers. The temperature fluctuates wildly from room to room. The roof leaks buckets on rainy winter days.

Lack of space in the evidence room has forced the use of outdoor storage bins for stolen property. Spare reams of paper are stacked beneath a trophy case, which includes a memorial to slain Officer Michael Clark.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake cracked the station’s walls and caused half the structure--actually a converted City Hall--to sink half a foot.

“Sometimes I have to meet with someone from the public and there is no place to go,” Rein lamented. “I wander around the station from room to room. And we end up having to meet in the hallway.”

It is not exactly the police facility one would envision for the community designated the safest in the nation among cities with at least 100,000 residents.

The new station will be an elegant, L-shaped building with double the work space--55,000 square feet.

It will have nine holding cells instead of five. Other features include 100 underground parking spaces, 90 desktop computers plus fiber-optic wiring, an advanced security system with scannable ID cards that record officers’ comings and goings, and an outdoor lunch area shaded by a trellis.

The construction company Shirley Brothers Inc. of Pasadena is building the station--funded by a combination of $10 million in bonds, the FEMA funds and money from the city’s Community Development Agency.

Without modification, the station is designed to fit the city’s growing police force for at least a decade. With minor renovations it should be comfortable for 10 years beyond that.

“We can’t get it built too quickly,” Chief Adams said. “I think the new facility will improve morale and give everyone a shot in the arm. It will instill an additional degree of pride here.”