What would it look like if Kenai’s fire and police stations moved into the Challenger Learning Center? Kenai City Council members now have an idea.
That’s after Chris Parker showed the council a slate of mock-ups illustrating ways of reorganizing the departments during their Apr. 1 meeting. He’s an architect with K + A designstudios, which the city contracted for $172,300 last year to assess its emergency services facility.
“After going through all of our programming efforts, it’s apparent that both entities need new space,” Parker said.
The presentation came months after Parker first met with the council to review where the city’s existing public safety building is falling short. Police and fire officials say services have outgrown the 50-year-old facility.
In all, Parker presented six options to the council. The first three are different renovations to the existing public safety building. Parker says renovations will be expensive because the building is so old. It needs new floors, a new ceiling and roof and it’s filled with asbestos – a hazardous material.
“It costs more to tear it apart and put it back together,” he said.
The first option is to renovate it for exclusive use by the Kenai Police Department for around $17.6 million. Through that remodel, Kenai police officers could use the apparatus space for cruiser parking and evidence storage.
Or the city could spend a little more – $19.5 million – to renovate the building for the Kenai Fire Department. It’s the most expensive option Parker presented, and would require adding another vehicle bay, transforming part of the building into a training room and making some of the walls taller.
A third option for the existing space would be a $4 million spruce-up at the old building – mechanical upgrades and lighting improvements over big upgrades.
But the city has floated the now-vacant Challenger Learning Center as a potential new space.
In some ways, Parker says the building already meets some of the departments’ needs. And it’s a newer building.
“The design is more organic, so it's not as easy to plug-and-play, move in offices and that type of thing,” he said. “But the bones and shell of the building are good. ”
The three options for the Challenger Learning Center include moving one or both departments into the building. The projected costs range from about $8 million for a police-only building, to about $11 million for a fire-only building, to $18 million for a building for both. Parker says putting both departments there would be a lot, but it’s doable.
Some council members have expressed concerns about relocating the departments to that site. It’s immediately adjacent to the city’s multi-purpose facility and to Kenai Central High and Kenai Middle schools.
Council member Bridget Grieme says the city needs to keep that in mind.
“I think we need to be very aware of what's already there, and if this would or would not be a good fit,” he said.
Nothing has been decided yet; Parker’s presentation is an early-stage look at what could be possible. But Public Works Director Lee Frey reminded the council that multiple groups have contacted the city about taking over the Challenger Learning Center.
“We felt it was important to kind of get this in front of you, and at least you know, show what the options are at the Challenger Center and what that might look like,” he said.
Parker says it’d ultimately be cheapest and fastest to design and construct a new building for the two departments. But either way, the city’s looking at a minimum of two years between the start of design work and a new building opening its doors. He says any of the renovation options would come with a 50- to 100-year lifespan.
