The big picture
City leaders and staff have been planning for years to upgrade public safety department facilities now viewed as obsolete and falling into disrepair.
The current headquarters of the Austin Police Department, Austin Fire Department and Austin/Travis County EMS are housed in buildings between 54-64 years old, each with a variety of issues:
- Downtown's 104,425-square-foot APD facility lacks hot water, sufficient parking and breastfeeding spaces for staff, while also experiencing frequent mechanical and wastewater failures;
- The city called AFD's east side headquarters "woefully insufficient" with a bad foundation and accessibility issues in an inconvenient location. The 103,800-square-foot facility also houses some police and EMS operations;
- EMS offices east of downtown experience mechanical failures, outdated sanitary and safety systems and limited parking in a "highly constrained" location. The 71,093-square-foot space also includes other city offices.
What's happening
City officials on Oct. 11 announced a plan to buy a 391,000-square-foot office campus off MoPac south of downtown to serve as a new public safety campus.
The four-story office buildings are located on about 14 acres at 1501-1601 S. MoPac alongside parking garages and other amenities. Beyond city personnel needs, Watson said the garages could also be used for public parking during festivals and events.
City Council will vote on a $107.89 million land acquisition, plus $9.9 million for design work and $3 million in initial renovation costs, on Oct. 24. Deputy CFO Kim Olivares said the state of the local office market allowed Austin to land an "incredible" price tag for the purchase; the city estimates building a comparable facility from scratch would cost up to $240 million.
The properties were appraised this year at $103.55 million combined.
City Manager T.C. Broadnax said the move would complete a longtime city vision of housing APD, AFD and EMS together, address the "unacceptable" conditions they're now facing and improve safety efforts in the city.
The details
If approved, the purchase will be funded through certificates of obligation, which allow governments to issue debt without voter approval. The city used the same approach for its recent acquisition of Tokyo Electron's Southeast Austin campus for new city offices and future housing.
The One and Two Barton Skyway buildings were built in 1999 and 2000, and Olivares said they've been "incredibly well-maintained" thanks to ongoing maintenance and renovations. She said a city building assessment rated their functional ages as closer to 10-15 years old.
Bringing police, fire and EMS personnel under one roof will "significantly enhance" emergency response and communications between the departments, according to the city, with added space for training, information-sharing and other operations. The nearly 400,000-square-foot property is expected to meet the three departments' current and future growth needs.
"The buildings will be used for administrative/office purposes. It will not be a station," a city spokesperson said in an email. "We anticipate the joint public safety HQ will naturally lead to improved collaboration among the departments which can have a positive impact on operations."
Prior to the October announcement, the city had previously been eyeing its 32-acre Rutherford Lane campus in Northeast Austin as a possible solution to its public safety facility challenges. Several city departments including APD have offices there, but Olivares said a full conversion for police, fire and EMS would've proved "challenging." The spokesperson said there are now "no plans" for expansion or redevelopment there.
What's next
Council members will be briefed on the property purchase during the Oct. 14 meeting of their Public Safety Committee before a potential final vote the following week.
If the deal is approved, Olivares said the closing process would be followed by a design review of about 6 months before renovations begin. Estimated completion and move-in dates will be determined after the early planning process.
"We are going to be on a ‘let's go’ kind of a timeline. We don't want to sit on this by any means," Olivares said. "These folks have been in suboptimal facilities for far too long; we don’t want to be slow about this in any way."
After the eventual relocations of APD, AFD and EMS, Watson also noted Austin could explore new opportunities with the city-owned headquarter properties now valued at tens of millions of dollars in total.
