By Kathy Lee Scott/Garden Grove Journal
The Garden Grove Council liked what it saw, so at Tuesday’s meeting, it extended its contract with Griffin Structures, Inc., from the end of July to the end of December.
During that time, Griffin will come up with more detailed drawings for the city’s new fire station on Euclid Street and the remodel for the police department building on Acacia Parkway.
In September 2008, the Laguna Beach-based company assessed how big a facility the police department needed. It concluded that the current building built in 1972 was inadequate for all of the police activities.
To find enough space, Griffin proposed building a new, 20,575-square-foot fire station located at the former Black Angus Restaurant site, 12900 Euclid Ave. The fire department would move out of the Acacia Parkway building, letting the police department expand into the vacated space.
At an April 2010 presentation, Roger Torriero, CEO of Griffin, said consolidating the police into one building would increase its efficiency.
“We’d improve our code enforcement,” said Police Chief Joseph Polisar. “There’d be more interaction and information exchange between the different groups.”
The units now housed in the police annex at Acacia and Seventh Street would return to the headquarters.
Before the police can expand, the fire personnel need to move to the new fire station.
The station would sit on a “tight site,” according to Dave Duff from LPA, the architectural firm working with Griffin on the project. “It’s perfect for a U-shaped driveway through the four-truck bay.”
He envisioned the trucks exiting onto Euclid and returning off Acacia, through city hall’s parking and a new parking lot, then into the bays.
The two-story structure would contain “maintenance-free materials, such as corrugated metal,” said Rick D’Amato, designer from LPA.
The top story would hold the dorms for the firefighters, and an upstairs patio would give them an outdoor area, D’Amato added.
In addition to the building, a new traffic signal would be installed, plus the controls to coordinate traffic lights when an engine needs to respond to a call, Duff said.
Part of the current parking for city hall would be fenced and dedicated to the fire station.
The city will pay Griffin $1.37 million, all of which comes from state sales taxes via the 1993 Proposition 172. According to Keith Jones, public works director, two-thirds of the money is already in the city’s budget. The rest will arrive after June 30.
“We have enough money for the next phase,” he said. The fire station design development drawings should be complete in August. This step will reveal any obstacles at the site, if there are any, Jones said.
By the end of the year, the blueprints should be ready to send out for construction bids, he added.
Griffin managed the design and construction of new police facilities for Buena Park and Westminster, as well as a fire station for Tustin. “The Buena Park people love what they did with their new police building,” said Mayor William Dalton at the April study session.
