New city hall plan put on hold
Because there’s not nearly enough money to pay for it, a plan to give the Fremont Civic Center a major overhaul will be put on hold, city officials told The Argus.
A master plan for the 5.7-acre downtown project, approved in 2014 and revised in late 2015, envisions construction of a two-story community center and public plaza beginning this year. Instead, ground won’t break for that first phase at least until spring 2019, according to Cliff Nguyen, the city’s urban initiatives manager.
The plan also calls for consolidation of city services — which currently are spread across three buildings — into a multilevel, glass-and-steel administration building along Captiol Avenue between Paseo Padre Parkway and State Street. While construction of that modern tower was originally planned to begin in 2024, then in 2020, it is now in flux.
“There’s no set date, no definitive date that I could confirm,” Nguyen said this week. “Whether it could be 2020 or not, there is a possibility, but it’s unlikely,” he added.
In April, when Nguyen and city staff last updated the city council on the project’s status, the proposed 175,000-squarefoot administration building was estimated to cost $195 million. That’s out of the city’s reach today, Nguyen said.
“Right now, the construction market is still trending very high and it hasn’t softened,” he added. “I think when the timing and costs prove to be more favorable is when I think we can revisit that. It’s just right now, it’s not a good time to build.”
The council suggested staff find ways to cut costs. Nguyen said that over the next year, staff will evaluate alternative designs that could include reducing the building’s size by relocating fire administration elsewhere, and it will search for other funding models as well.
Other elements of the civic center project indefinitely on hold include a 600-space parking garage and a potential annex.
The entire project was estimated to cost around $191 million when first proposed, and at the time there was a roughly $88 million shortfall. The city planned to pay for much of the project by selling 10 surplus properties.
To date, six sites have been sold for a total of $42 million, but that money also is supposed to be spread around for other city projects.
A developer recently ditched a deal to purchase one of the remaining surplus sites at 4268 Decoto Road for $32 million, which City Manager Fred Diaz said threw the civic center project into an even more fluid state.
“We had an expense problem we were trying to get under control,” he said. “Take $32 million away from that, and it makes it pretty hard to build any kind of city hall.”
Nguyen said of the $42 million earned from site sales, approximately $20 million has been used to acquire land and buildings in downtown, renovate and build out Capitol Avenue, and fund “placemaking activities such as Fremont Street Eats” in Warm Springs.
The roughly $22 million left over will go toward creating a permanent community center and public plaza, he said. Noting that phase of the project was last estimated to cost $35 million, Nguyen said it too will have to be significantly scaled back to cut costs.
In the meantime, because the city is still focused on establishing a “social heart” in the downtown area, a temporary public plaza will be set up on the site of two Town Fair Shopping Center buildings, near the corner of Capitol Avenue and State Street.
The city council last week approved spending almost $900,000 to raze the two structures, which Nguyen said could begin in August. He expects the temporary plaza to be ready for use in April 2018.
He said while nothing is set in stone, city officials are considering having an outdoor gaming and play area, beer garden, stage and outdoor furniture and lighting, among other amenities, in the interim space. He added that the city will hire a consultant for roughly $95,000 to help design the area.
Nguyen said the civic center project is important because it fits into the city’s vision for a vibrant downtown people can be proud of.
“Right now when people want to experience a downtown, they’re going to other cities like Oakland and San Francisco. We’re the fourth largest city in the Bay Area and yet we don’t have a downtown,” he said.
“It’s all about creating the place for people to connect, communicate and celebrate.”