Council considers cost of city-owned City Hall, PD station

By Doug Spoon, Editor

After paying the escalating costs of a lease for the last 15 years on buildings that have served as City Hall, City of Menifee officials are ready to get serious about building a home of their own.

In a public workshop last week, City staff members and financial advisors proposed to the City Council a plan that would have the City owning spacious new buildings for City Hall and Police Department headquarters in the next few years.

The City has already outgrown the building that has served as City Hall since 2019 in a medical plaza on Haun Road. City officials are in the midst of a 10-year lease through 2029, with the current annual payment at $722,424.

According to Michael Busch of consulting firm Urban Futures, Inc., the lease payment for the 26,000-square-foot building increases by about 13 percent per year. UFI lists the maximum lease payment at the end of the term to be $1.47 million. In addition, the City IT Department leases space in an adjacent building for a current annual payment of $61,457.

The City owns land for a new City Hall in the Menifee Town Center, and for the first time, specifics for that project have been announced. Last week’s proposal is to build a 65,948-square-foot City Hall at an estimated cost of $59.7 million. A total of $4.75 million has already been committed to the project – an amount Busch says is sufficient to pay for phase 1 of the design work.

With the population of Menifee expected to grow to 150,000 by 2045, City officials are eager to establish a timeline that would bring a new facility as soon as possible. According to Wednesday’s presentation, they hope to award a construction contract by the spring of 2024.

The Police Department headquarters, which currently exist in the building previously leased for the City Hall, would be next on the timeline. The PD Department lease is currently at $523,723 and is up in 2024 (renewable through 2034). The existing building has approximately 19,700 square feet, plus 8,898 square feet now available through the City’s recent purchase of the former Bank of America building on Cherry Hills Boulevard.

The proposal calls for a city-owned Police station of 54,626 square feet to be built at a cost of $58.2 million. The site of the PD headquarters has not been announced, but a logical location would be vacant land recently purchased by the City at the corner of Cherry Hills Boulevard and Bradley Road – site of the old Kings Inn in Sun City.

In addition, the plan calls for upgrades to the 16,253-square-foot Public Works facility, at an estimated cost of $12.6 million. The current City maintenance yard is city-owned property on a former fire station on Bradley Road.

The next step in the process is another workshop in the fall, during which alternative project delivery options will be discussed.

By comparison, Murrieta’s City Hall, completed in 2008, cost $14.5 million for 34,000 square feet. At the time, the average construction cost was $426 per square foot. Now it is approximately $1,000 per square foot, Busch said. Temecula’s City Hall, completed in 2010, cost $45.8 million for 96,000 square feet.

Eastvale’s City Hall, which is now under construction, has an estimated cost of $52 million for 50,000 square feet.