LAPD to Shift Valley Offices to GM Location

The Los Angeles Police Department will move at least part of its San Fernando Valley headquarters into the development replacing the former General Motors plant--but city officials differed Friday over whether that signals the establishment of a second Valley Bureau or merely relocates the existing office.

LAPD Chief Bernard Parks and Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon have scheduled a news conference for Monday morning to announce that a police installation will be included in the $100-million retail and manufacturing development, which will be known as The Plant.

In addition to new police facilities, the Los Angeles Fire Department will also build a new fire station on the site, Fire Department sources confirmed.

Some City Hall insiders characterized Friday’s developments as an indication that Parks is ready to divide the overburdened Valley Bureau--which oversees the Valley’s five police divisions--into two bureaus to split the workload. Citywide, the LAPD is currently divided into four areas, each overseen by a regional headquarters bureau.

Other city officials--including Deputy Chief Michael Bostic, who heads the Valley Bureau--said that the move simply shifts some present offices to a new location. The change is primarily to relieve overcrowding at the Van Nuys Civic Center, where the bureau now shares quarters with the Van Nuys Division station, Bostic said.

Bostic did say, however, that the move would lay the groundwork for a possible division of the bureau at a later date.

“We’re OK, it’s just that everybody is kind of in cramped quarters,” Bostic said.

In the proposal set to be unveiled Monday, Bostic said, the Valley Traffic Division’s 200 officers and the Valley Bureau’s 60 officers and civilian employees would move to the GM plant site to work out of a new joint police and fire facility.

“We do almost everything together anyway,” Bostic said, referring to crime scenes and traffic accidents where police officers and paramedics often work side by side. “It’s a good partnership and makes perfect sense.”

The new facilities would reportedly include three structures to be built on five acres of land donated to the city by General Motors Corp. City officials estimated the cost at between $6 million and $10 million. Police and fire officials did not know where the money would come from.

For years, Alarcon--who was unavailable for comment Friday--has pushed for both a new operational bureau in the Valley and a sixth police division in his northeast Valley district. The GM site had been at the top of his list of potential locations for a new division, but Friday’s developments appeared to make that unlikely.

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Bostic said it makes no sense to install a new police division at the GM site because it would be too close to the Van Nuys Division, just two miles away. Construction of a new station and jail would cost about $25 million to $30 million, far more than the bureau offices.

The Valley Bureau, which serves an area with more than 1.2 million residents, has by far the largest territory in the city.

In the last five years, under Mayor Richard Riordan’s LAPD expansion plan--following up on his campaign promise to put more cops on the street--the department has added more than 2,000 officers. About 100 of the new officers are stationed in Van Nuys, Bostic said.

In August, only hours after being sworn in as the new chief of police, Parks told a Valley audience that he supported creating both a second operational bureau in the area and a sixth police division.

Riordan, who received 74% of the Valley vote in his reelection last year, included funding in his most recent budget for both a new Valley fire station and police station. At the time, he said he would push the City Council to support his proposal for a $350-million to $400-million bond measure to improve and build new police stations.

Voters have rejected similar measures in the past.

In 1995, Proposition 1, a $171-million bond measure to build new police facilities, received more than 50% of the vote but fell short of the two-thirds approval needed to pass.

The station at The Plant would be in addition to an already-budgeted station, for which fire officials are scouting potential locations in Panorama City, north of the GM site. The $1.1 million for that station was included in the city’s 1997-98 budget because that area now has the longest fire and paramedic response times in the city.

The two new stations will replace Station 81 in Arleta, which is slated to close after the new facilities are completed, said Emile Mack, Fire Department planning chief.

The conversion of the site from a Camaro-manufacturing plant--closed by General Motors as uneconomical--to a multimillion-dollar shopping center is the work of S & V Properties, a venture by the Voit Cos. and the Selleck family, a prominent real estate family that includes actor Tom Selleck.

The project took a key step forward in July when the developer announced that 90% of the retail space had been rented even before construction began. It will be anchored by a 105,000-square-foot Home Depot store and a 16-screen Mann’s Theatre.

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On Friday, neighbors of the development reacted cautiously to the news that a police office would be moving into the site, even though the administrative facility will not be a front-line police station. More than one neighbor expressed lingering concerns about crime and blight in the immediate neighborhood, saying they would not be satisfied with anything less than a full-fledged police station.

“Of course we would like to see a full-blown police station there, but we certainly hope that whatever they do, they include enough of a police presence to deter any increase in crime in the area,” said Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn.

Leslie Yamashita , director of the Panorama City Neighborhood Assn., said her group was disappointed that Alarcon has not been able to fulfill his stated goal of creating a new police division for the area.

“That’s what this neighborhood wants and that’s what we’ve been promised, but Alarcon is not going to give it to us,” Yamashita said. “We deserve it because we are one of the most densely populated areas of the city.”