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The East Palo Alto City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to move forward with a multimillion dollar plan to build a civic commons, a municipal development that will include a new library, City Hall, Police Department headquarters, community space and an athletic field, among other amenities.
Dozens showed up to show support for the project that is the result of years-long studies urging the city to update its municipal spaces.
The council allocated $20 million from its general fund to the project in a June budget meeting and there are plans to partner with private and public entities to further fund the project. As of Tuesday, no donations had been officially announced.
Currently, East Palo Alto rents its City Hall offices, police department space and library, which are fragmented across different buildings, “undermining operational efficiency and long-term stability,” according to city documents.
Originally, the city’s plans envisioned standalone buildings for its municipal services that would cost approximately $140 million. That changed when Sycamore Real Estate Investment, which is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, offered to build a four-story, 102,600-square-foot building at 2535 Pulgas Avenue for the project.
The nonprofit organization JobTrain had planned to occupy two floors of the building but recently backed out.
Now, East Palo Alto plans to house its library, a one-stop permitting center, the City Council Chambers and community areas on the first floor of the building. There would be additional library space, city offices and meeting rooms on the second floor.The third floor would include nonprofit and private tenant spaces, while city administrative offices would occupy the fourth floor.
The consolidated building could be more affordable with the help of Sycamore Real Estate, which may help provide donations to the project.
“There’s a lot of excitement in the donor community to make this happen and millions of dollars have already been pledged for this,” Vice Mayor Mark Dinan said at the city council meeting.
The real estate company also plans to create a separate police station on the same site but the new building has not yet been designed or permitted.
Private donors also plan to pay over $30 million to construct an athletic park on six acres of land adjacent to the proposed civic center, according to the city.
The park would offer a multi-use field with football, soccer and baseball striping, backstops and an encompassing eight-lane track. There would also be picnic areas, children’s play areas, a senior balance court, an exercise plaza, two pickleball courts and a basketball half-court surrounding the track.
We need to stop being the step children of the county.
jeff Liu, east palo alto police chief
In order to receive the park donations, the city approved a memorandum of understanding that, for the first 25 years, East Palo Alto’s youth athletic association, the Greyhounds, would have exclusive use of the track-and-field on particular days and times.The details of that arrangement are still being worked out.
The association, which hosts local cheerleading, football and track and field teams, was created by lifelong East Palo Alto resident Eric Stuart, who called the project something he’s “dreamed about” for 20 years.
Kids have had to practice and play most games outside of the city, but when they are home, they feel more supported by greater numbers of family members that can attend, Stuart said at the City Council meeting, where a group of young athletes sat and waved.
“We would love for you to approve anything that’s going on with the East Palo Alto civic commons because it would bring us home for the first time,” he said.
In a staff report to the council, Assistant City Manager Shiri Klima asked the council to consider the current state of the city.
Klima called the library, city hall and police station outdated and said the city lacked parks and leasable space for nonprofits.
“You could have a 24,000-square-foot library, three times the size of the library across the way, could have an updated city hall, updated police station that serve the residents better,” she said.
The city council showed unanimous support for the plan. Council member Ruben Abrica called the project a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The council’s newly approved policy allows city managers to begin approving permits for the project. That said, it is only the beginning of a long-anticipated project, according to city officials.
“This report does not get you all of that but it gets the ball rolling,” Klima said.
‘A home to be proud of’
The East Palo Alto Police Department moved into its “temporary” location 19 years ago.
The exterior walls are eroding, carpets are stained from water leaks and employees nearly sit shoulder-to-shoulder at crowded desk areas.
“We have to be smart with the people’s money,” said Police Chief Jeff Liu as he walked through the facility.
Sometimes repairs are made, but the agency has been holding out for something bigger – a brand new police department that is now included in the new civic commons plan.
The city council approved Tuesday night one incremental step toward the new civic commons project, which will likely take years to accomplish. But because a new police department was a later addition to the plan, it was not included in Tuesday’s vote.
According to city documents, the separate 20,000-square-foot., single-story police station on the same property will return to the council to be permitted “in the future.”
“Why do you think we need a new building?” Liu asked in the police station before officers quickly stepped out of their cubicles.
Above all, officers said a new building could boost morale and decrease staff turnover.
“We try to sell the team, because we can’t sell the environment,” Liu said.
As this reporter and Liu walked up to a portable building containing the gym and break areas, the floor creaked and wooden boards lining the ramp were missing or destroyed. The exterior wall cracked and caved in upon touching it. A maintenance worker told Liu that patching up holes at the building was a waste of time.
Inside the gym, workout equipment and machines were pushed up against each other. Liu moved machinery in order to navigate the room. Officers who are women try to stagger their workouts in order to take turns using the single shower in their locker room and avoid changing all at once in the tight space.
One of the evidence-storing stations is tucked into the corner of an office, located so close to staff that they can often smell confiscated narcotics, which are located right beside a make-shift kitchen space.
“If we need to have a conversation with a community member, we go outside so they don’t have to talk about their private business in front of others,” Liu said.
Police also face a lack of security in the office, which doesn’t have a dedicated area to seat people who were recently arrested and the lack of space becomes especially difficult when someone is facing a mental health crisis.
Sometimes detainees wait in a small office space that is not equipped with the tools needed to handcuff someone, so only their hands are handcuffed together and they can roam the room that shares a wall with the sergeant’s office. He sometimes hears people banging on the walls and screaming.
Officers need to exit and enter separate buildings because the department is spread across portable modules and a standalone substation located down the street from the main location.
“We need to stop being the step children of the county,” Liu said.
East Palo Alto Police Department Captain Jaime Jiménez said a new station would not only serve the police, but support a community that isn’t always prioritized by the county.
“Its about having a home to be proud of,” Jiménez said. “People in East Palo Alto deserve better.”
‘Crowded and outdated’
On a summer afternoon, dozens of adults and children can be found in East Palo Alto’s single room library, using computer stations, reading with parents and relaxing in the few seating areas.
The library is operated by San Mateo County and moved into 7,680 square feet of county-owned space at 2415 University Ave. in 1975.
Currently, residents tend to use the room as a community space where they access healthy meals and English-learning services on top of typical library resources, said longtime East Palo Alto librarian Enrique Godinez.
Kids play and read aloud in some areas and just feet away, adults scroll through documents on computers.
A 2017 East Palo Alto library assessment called for a greater variety of quiet spaces, meeting rooms, staff areas and dedicated children and teen zones to provide “dynamic engagement opportunities.”
“That library is crowded and outdated, and results in individuals traveling out of the city under existing conditions,” Klima wrote in city documents.
While the closest county-owned library in North Fair Oaks is smaller than East Palo Alto’s, neighboring facilities in Atherton and San Carlos have multi-room, expansive centers. The neighboring community of Palo Alto, which is in Santa Clara County, has five libraries, including the two-story Mitchell Park Library, which was constructed in 2014.
Previously, East Palo Alto officials had planned to create a 25,000-square-foot, two-story library at 2474 Pulgas Ave., with office and community spaces on the ground floor and additional library stacks and exterior decks on the upper floor.
“Sadly, we didn’t end up getting our own building, even though most do in the county,” Godinez said.
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Thank you for another good article Almanac. After reading about the concerns with information sharing through city cameras in nearby Atherton, through this article I hope readers can see the level of dysfunction we are dealing with in the city of East Palo Alto. No city offices or city hall, library smaller than most houses in Atherton, police department in separate decrepit portables in a nonfunctional abandoned piece of industrial space in the city. Questions about information sharing on cameras would be a pleasant problem for us to deal with.
One note for the City Council though, please centralize your focus on getting the City Hall, library, and police department over the park. The park should definitely be a priority, but like so many things in this city, the pedestrian bridge to nowhere at University, the never built Ravenswood office space/commercial/housing space at the end of Bay Road, the “Willow Village” (Menlo Park, but close enough to EPA for us to screw it up), and the empty store fronts at the only city commercial space, the Ravenswood Shopping Center, focusing on to much at once leads to lesser outcomes, or nothing in the end. Keep your eyes on the prize, a functional Civic Center and library that can help get kids throughout the city coming in on a weekly basis to help address the growing problems we are seeing with illiteracy in the schools.