The 437 million dollar police station in Los Angeles is quite the bargain.

Sunday, October 25th at 2:38PM EST

22 Comments

LOS ANGELES (AP) – The Los Angeles Police Department is officially being handed the keys to its new headquarters.

Local officials including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and outgoing police Chief William Bratton are scheduled to open the gleaming 10-story, $437 million downtown structure Saturday morning.

The so-called Police Administration Building will replace Parker Center four blocks away. The 1955 facility has outlived its service life and is likely to be demolished.

Voters in 2002 approved a bond measure for new police facilities, and construction began on the new headquarters in 2007.

The new building features a broad glass front police say represents a new era of transparency for a department once resistant to public scrutiny.

That’s just one police station. Not all of them. Picture.
Wow….ten whole stories for the bargain price of 437 meellion dollars.
About 43 million dollars a floor. I’m sure they have underground parking as well.
Gee. I guess L.A. county must be swimming in the dough to have built such an expensive building.
Could they have possibly spent any more money on it…?
How the hell they managed to spend 437 million dollars on just one ten story building is beyond me.
Just to compare. Let me show you what much less money can build.

Hoover Dam bypass project. 240 million dollars.
Picture.

Trump World Tower. 300 million.

Zakim Bridge. 105 million. The widest cable stayed bridge in the world. Picture.

One Wal-Mart 10.3 million
Wal-Mart could build 43 new stores for the price of that one single police station.
What’s it got…? Golden toilets.

22 Comments Leave a comment

It cost so much because the unions had to be paid MORE...

JadedByPolitics (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 3:12PM EST (link)

to build it! I am sure there were some kickbacks to union leaders etc., that stuff adds at least 100 million to a project!

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It's a perfect example of govt. waste.

NeoKong (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 3:46PM EST (link)

Trump can build 72 story luxury high rises cheaper than L.A. built a police station ten stories tall.

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Trump's security requirements are a tad less than

mbecker908 (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 4:41PM EST (link)

LAPD and he didn’t have to deal with earthquake regs. And no, I have no clue how much either of those added to the cost, but they are real differences and both are expensive as hell.

Security added some.

NightTwister (Diary) Monday, October 26th at 12:30AM EST (link)

Earthquake supports don’t add all that much. More steel in the concrete (especially horizontal ties). More diagonal bracing. It probably doesn’t add more than 10% to the structural elements of the building which aren’t nearly the greatest cost of a structure. The added structure necessary to resist wind forces of a high-rise like the Trump Tower are about the same.

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Looks like a bargain compared to NYC

Big Apple Infidel (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 11:37PM EST (link)

The new NYPD Police Academy in Queens is budgeted for around $1 billion. Likewise, the new NYPD BACKUP 911 call center in the Bronx is budgeted for $1 billion. They just renovated a single floor of the existing 911 call center in Brooklyn for the bargain price of $166 million.

Meanwhile cops are driving around in crappy Nissan Altima hybrids that aren’t suited for the task or large enough for the average human wearing a loaded equipment belt. This is an agency still using 40 year old teletype machines, manual typewriters and a converted Pan Am ticketing program as their CAD dispatch system.

Someone’s making money somewhere on all this.

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Oh my God.....

NeoKong (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 11:42PM EST (link)

Are those numbers for real ?

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Those numbers...

Big Apple Infidel (Diary) Monday, October 26th at 12:00AM EST (link)

are the project budget right now. Let’s see what they look like upon delivery of the final product in the next decade.

Greetings from occupied territory!

Interesting BAI.

mbecker908 (Diary) Monday, October 26th at 12:12AM EST (link)

The real question, in order to get a comparison, would be what is the land cost and square footage of each project.

Lots of costs in public buildings

SteveLA (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 3:17PM EST (link)

NeoKing

Not defending this, but it’s expensive to build public stuff in CA now.

Earthquake safety, probably to 8.0 or better
ADA accommodations for visitors and prisoners
Land costs
Union workers
Graft

You know how it goes, not cheap.

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Competency over ideological purity and litmus tests

They built one in San Pedro....

NeoKong (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 3:42PM EST (link)

for only 40 million.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/04/the-los-angeles-police-department-will-unveil-its-new-40-million-police-station-in-a-ribbon-cutting-ceremony-today-for-the-h.html

” The Los Angeles Police Department will unveil its new $40-million police station during a ribbon-cutting ceremony today for the Harbor Station, which serves parts of San Pedro, Harbor Gateway and Wilmington.

The 50,000-square-foot facility will be the new home to the Harbor Division’s 260 patrol officers, detectives and support staff, who have been working out of temporary trailers since 2005, when the nearly century-old Harbor Station was closed for demolition.”

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And, they are about the same price.

mbecker908 (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 4:15PM EST (link)

San Pedro, $40MM, 50K sf.
LAPD, $437MM, 500K sf.

LAPD HQ is about 10% more expensive than San Pedro and I’d bet the difference is land cost.

Well there's that too

SteveLA (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 4:18PM EST (link)

mbecker

Why confuse things with facts? I just looked those facts up, and yes the new LAPD HQ is 10x bigger than the one in San Pedro, probably has more jail space too and office space for the LAPD command staff. 10 percent is not much of a delta on cost.

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Competency over ideological purity and litmus tests

The original estimate was much lower.

NeoKong (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 4:26PM EST (link)

http://www.buildingtradesnews.com/content/view/80/122/

“The Los Angeles Public Works Board approved a $231.3 million contract on Sept. 27 for the construction of a new police headquarters. The project was awarded to Tutor-Saliba, the sole bidder on the project.”

It seems the price went up about 206 million.

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There's no date on the article and the picture

mbecker908 (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 4:38PM EST (link)

shows a five story building.

I’m not saying you’re wrong on the original estimate, a 100% over-run is typical, but I can’t tell what was really approved or when based on the article you linked.

And, personally, I really don’t care what the City of LA paid for the building as long as they didn’t use TARP funds or similar.

72 stories 300 million vs. 10 stories for 437 million...?

NeoKong (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 5:43PM EST (link)

You think $1,000 a sq. ft is reasonable ?
May I build a garage for you?
They may not have many earth quakes in New York but they do occasionally get blizzards and hurricanes. A 72 story building has to be built strong. Luxury high rises have hundred of very expensive kitchens,master baths and all sorts of amenities that public buildings do not have like expensive sound systems,individual hv/ac and custom walk-in closets. As for the security concerns go I’m pretty sure that you would have a harder time getting past the lobby in the luxury high rise than you would in a large public building.

The company that built it,Tutor-Saliba has a checkered history in L.A. as they also were involved with their new rail system and have had many inquiries into their expenses.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/05/business/fi-perini5

“Tutor-Saliba, founded 60 years ago, has a long and, at times, controversial history of involvement in Los Angeles public works projects. It was the only bidder in 2006 to build the new home for the Los Angeles Police Department, and its initial bid was $43 million over the city’s projected budget of $200 million.

This week, the city estimated that the cost of the new downtown headquarters had soared to more than $453 million and blamed the city’s engineering agency for failing to provide proper oversight of the project.

In 2006, Tutor-Saliba, Perini and another company agreed to pay $19 million to the city and county of San Francisco to settle a lawsuit alleging that the firms overbilled for work done on an expansion project at San Francisco International Airport and manipulated minority contracting laws.

Tutor-Saliba also has been involved in controversies surrounding transportation-related projects in Los Angeles.”

There was your starting date.
2006.
The building cost too much.

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I'm not by any means defending the price.

mbecker908 (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 5:48PM EST (link)

Hell will freeze over when I defend an action by any governmental unit not commanded from the Pentagon. (And preferably with it’s HQ at 8th & I.)

All I’m saying is you’re not comparing apples and apples.

As far as the City of LA paying for it, let ‘em default on the bonds. That will offset the high cost.

Obviously, a bunch of people on this thread don't understand gov't. procurement.

Achance (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 5:58PM EST (link)

Everybody knows all the specs, all the methods, and the engineers’ estimates on any gov’t project. All of them in a Union state will have to be bidding on the same wage rates for the trades. All of them will have been a part of the same permitting process that has all the bleeding edge environmental stuff, all the most fashionable ADA stuff, all the OSHA mandated ergonomic stuff for the employees, and on, and on. People are bribed or paid consulting fees, many hired by the government at every stage of both the permitting and financeing process. Then, all the bids will either be about the same or only one big dog is left standing who is willing to pay all the bribes and employ all the ghost employees that a job like this takes. If more than one stays in the game, it then becomes a matter of which bidder is the most “responsive.” Remember that word, you work a significant portion of a year for it. So, it comes down to a subjective evaluation by the government as to which bidder is most responsive. Somewhere in that determination one or more phone calls along the lines of, “there’s a ten percent discount on that bid; what account do I deposit it to?” You can be that account number ain’t the governments. It’s a dog eat dog world out there.

In Vino Veritas

State and local no

SteveLA (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 6:07PM EST (link)

Federal is another kettle of fish all together from my work experience. Maybe in mega buck contracts some funny stuff happens, smaller ones are pretty clean and watched by the contracting folks like a hawk. I’m probably in the camp of too much watching and too tight of controls, but that’s me.

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Competency over ideological purity and litmus tests

it is a little less complex here in the south

kyle8 (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 6:09PM EST (link)

You are a state politician. Uncle Jim Bob has a construction company, Junior, fresh out of law school needs a job, and State Senator Bubba owes you a favor, So you get a nice road or bridge project started. Simple as that. Sure there are bids, but they go out to whomever is next in line.

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Tutor was "responsive"

NeoKong (Diary) Sunday, October 25th at 6:20PM EST (link)

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/02/local/me-tutor2

” Tutor has made big marks on California’s landscape while amassing hundreds of millions of dollars, a yacht he rents out for hundreds of thousands of dollars a week, and a Boeing 737 jetliner.

In Los Angeles alone, he has built or rebuilt the Central Library, the international terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, the Coliseum, the new federal courthouse, the Alameda Corridor and most of Metro Rail.

Sharp and determined, he can speak for hours in perfect sentences and clearly remember details of business transactions from years ago. He is quick to turn others’ mistakes to his advantage.

He also is politically astute and well-connected. Records show that Tutor spent more than $75,000 to help elect James K. Hahn mayor of Los Angeles, and donated $50,000 to a cause favored by San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. When Gov. Gray Davis needs to get somewhere quickly, Tutor’s private jet is at his disposal. But records show that Tutor has not voted in a county, state or federal election since 1994.

He knows how to take care of his friends.

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Feng Shui costs money people! I'm sure they have Ed Begley Jr. on the case. nt

Common_Cents (Diary) Monday, October 26th at 11:50AM EST (link)

Obama=Golfer in Chief, Leading from, ~~behind~~, the Back Nine.
Leaders don’t create movements. Movements create leaders. Get involved. Your future depends on it.
Govt “invests” YOUR tax money for POLITICAL return rather than economic return.

Hey now

SteveLA (Diary) Monday, October 26th at 11:54AM EST (link)

Don’t be a hate’n on Ed, his show is very amusing and some of his “tricks” to save energy appeals to this cheap skate. Ed’s just so goofy that he’s entertaining and besides, Dr. Victor Ehrlich would not like your snark.

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Competency over ideological purity and litmus tests