The Haines Borough has selected Alaska-based architecture firm Bettisworth North, the same firm that worked on Skagway’s public safety building and the expansion of the Haines school, to create a conceptual design for its new public safety building. On Oct. 14, borough staff and assembly members held a preliminary meeting with Bettisworth North representatives to discuss the need for a new building and the next steps.
Earlier this fall, a committee consisting of assembly members Brenda Josephson and Paul Rogers, Mayor Jan Hill, borough clerk and interim manager Alekka Fullerton, chief fiscal officer Jila Stuart, grants administrator Carolann Wooton, public facilities director Ed Coffland, police chief Heath Scott and fire chief Al Giddings selected Bettisworth North from a list of 15 applicants to carry out the design.
“One of the things (about Bettisworth North) that stuck out for me was their community engagement,” Wooton said. “We understand that doing a building in our community is going to require a lot of community engagement.”
The borough’s more than 40-year-old public safety building, which houses police, fire and assembly chambers, has been in a state of disrepair for many years. The current structure has numerous problems including a peeling façade, sinking foundation, cramped quarters and an electrical system that is both dangerous and maxed out in terms of capacity.
At present, the borough doesn’t have a funding source for a new facility. In past interviews with the CVN, Coffland estimated a new public safety building could cost as much as $20 million, including the planning and design phase, which tends to total between 8% and 10% of the entire project cost.
Coffland said a call from Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office earlier this year solidified in his mind the need to begin moving forward with plans for a new building.
“Murkowski called up Debra Schnabel, our manager at that time, and asked her to send them her shovel-ready projects because they expected to have money coming out by the end of the week,” Coffland said. “We realized we didn’t have any.”
Coffland said the hope is to flesh out the plan for a new public safety building to a point where it’s competitive for future funding opportunities. He used the analogy of a prospective homeowner applying for a loan from the bank.
“If you want to build a house and you go to the banker and say, ‘I want to borrow money to build a house,’ the first thing they’re going to say is, ‘What kind of house do you want to build?’ And if you say, ‘Well, I don’t know, just give me the money, we’ll see how it turns out,’ you’re not likely to get the money,” Coffland said.
At last week’s meeting, Coffland and Bettisworth North representatives explained why they favor building a new facility over renovating the current one.
“Of all the facilities that we’ve worked on… this would be at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of building quality, but also there’s no ability to accommodate basic space needs,” public safety facility specialist Brian Harris said. “It’s really difficult to work on a building that essentially has become functionally obsolete and is beyond its useful life.”
Harris said to be able to meet modern standards for a public safety building, the new facility will need to be roughly half again as big as the current one.
Renovating the current building has some cost-saving advantages, but Bettisworth North’s analysis is they’re not worth it when weighed against the limitations of the current facility and the extent of its repair needs.
“We’ve gone through the analysis and determined that if you gut a building down to its structure, you’re really only saving about twenty percent of the costs of the building and when we go beyond seventy-five percent of the costs of a new (building) in a renovation, that’s the point where we say… it doesn’t make any sense,” principal-in-charge Roy Rountree said.
Assembly members at the meeting spoke in favor of the project.
“We know this building needs to be replaced. We have a world-class school. We have a world-class library, and we have a third-world public safety building. I appreciate all this information, but we just need to start pushing this hard,” assembly member Gabe Thomas said.
Rountree outlined the process the firm will work through to produce a conceptual design for the new building. He said the first step involves brainstorming a list of spaces the facility should include based on user and community input. After that, the firm will work to ensure the rooms in the facility are arranged in a logical way and begin looking for a site that meets the facility’s needs, including exterior spaces like parking lots. The conceptual design will show what the building will look like in its selected environment.
In an interview with the CVN after the meeting, Coffland said a contract with Bettisworth North has yet to be finalized. Coffland declined to give a ballpark estimate for the cost of the work, although he said it will be significantly less than 10% of the project’s total cost, as the conceptual design is only the beginning of the planning and design phase. Coffland said the borough does have money available for this portion of the project.
The assembly is currently considering an ordinance that will amend the budget, reassigning $440,000 set aside for “Improvements to the Public Safety Building” and putting them toward “Public Safety Building Improvements and New Construction Design.” The ordinance’s second reading is Oct. 27.