Temporary Location Picked for Culver City Hall Offices

The Culver City Council has decided to move into temporary offices on a residential lot at Culver Boulevard and Overland Avenue while the city’s 72-year-old City Hall is being replaced.

Three people spoke Monday night against the council’s plans to set up temporary trailers on the three-acre corner lot owned by the Redevelopment Agency.

The lot is the same area the council had selected in February, 1987, for the new City Hall, but public outcry for a downtown site forced the council to find another location.

The city plans to raze the old City Hall at Culver Boulevard and Duquesne Street and replace it with a 30,000-square-foot, L-shaped building.

Abuts Residential Area

City officials had expected more opposition to the temporary offices because the site abuts a residential area.

“I was expecting at least a dozen people to speak, so yes, the fact that there were only three people did surprise me,” Councilwoman Jozelle Smith said.

The three people who spoke expressed concern about traffic, parking and whether homes could later be built on the site.

Council members said that although the trailers will be in place for about four years during demolition and construction of City Hall, preparations for private development of the agency site will proceed after the city vacates it.

Jody Hall-Esser, assistant executive director of the Redevelopment Agency, said city employees are expected to move into the trailers in June. The cost of moving and maintaining the temporary facilities, about 2,800 square feet in 12-foot-by-60-foot trailers, is expected to be about $1.5 million over the four years.

In a related matter, the City Council postponed a decision on the relocation of Fire Station No. 1, which is next to City Hall, but agreed to build the new station twice the size of the existing one to accommodate future growth.

The city staff had recommended that the new station be built on the back half of Redevelopment Agency-owned property at Culver Boulevard and Irving Place about a block away from City Hall.

But the council asked the staff to provide a financial analysis of a plan to build the station on the police station parking lot behind City Hall. Staff had opposed that plan because it would involve buying five or six residential lots on Lafayette Place and Braddock Drive.

Hall-Esser said that the Redevelopment Agency could not afford to buy those lots unless other projects were postponed and that the time involved could delay construction of the fire station and City Hall.

The financial analysis is expected to come back to council within 30 days, Hall-Esser said.