The new Vancouver Operations Center will not only be built from scratch, but will be relocated outside of city limits. At least that’s the consensus that came out of a city council workshop Monday and the preference of Public Works Director Brian Carlson.
“I love our current location. It serves us extremely well for today, but we’re not building for today, we’re building for the future,” Carlson said. “We’ve been at the current site today for 40 years. So where’s our (city) center going to be in 20 to 40 years?”
The current operations center is located on Fourth Plain Boulevard and General Anderson Avenue: right in the middle of the Fourth Plain district targeted by the city for redevelopment and revitalization.
Carlson asked the council if it made sense, given the higher-level planning, to keep the center at that location. The answer was a resounding “no.”
“What could this land be producing in this corridor if it was put to its best use?” Councilor Ty Stober asked. “I think that the opportunity cost is really high for this prime piece of property.”Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle said the corridor is the Fourth Plain International District, an area the city wants to develop and celebrate.
“Sticking an operations center in it, while it looks great, I think there are better uses for it. As long as it’s in the (urban growth area) and service area,” McEnerny-Ogle said. “Would you please consider getting your ops out of our Fourth Plain?”
‘Heartbeat of our city’
Plans to redevelop the operations center stem from both the city’s strategic plan and Vancouver Strong’s directive. The center was built in 1951 and has had little redevelopment since. Vancouver bought the 10.2-acre property in 1978, back when the building housed 90 employees and 150 vehicles.
Now about 270 employees work out of the building and more than 500 vehicles are stored on-site. Carlson described the center as the “heartbeat of our city operation and maintenance.”
But the building is also seismically unsound.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” he said.
Staff came up with five proposals to fix the problem, as well as an estimate to make just necessary seismic upgrades. A study found that to keep up with projected staffing levels and service needs, the operations center needs to be on a site between 25 and 30 acres in size.
The first three proposals redevelop the center on the existing site, with the option to potentially purchase a few extra acres. The most expensive option, at a cost of $157 million, involves adding a five-story parking structure and a three-story office building to the existing property. But Carlson said looking ahead, the site would be inadequate for future needs. Options two and three account for additional property on Fourth Plain and a smaller parking garage, but with costs between $141 million and $151 million.
Relocating equipment services and using the available space and additional nearby property gets the cost down to $123 million, but separating facilities isn’t the preference for operations.
Just completing seismic upgrades would cost $53 million. Relocating to a new site is estimated to cost $126 million.
Carlson said there’s a tentative workshop scheduled Aug. 27 to talk about how to finance the project. As it stands, about 40 percent, or $50 million, would come from the general fund. The rest comes from utility taxes.
