Construction of a new city hall and police station in Manzanita is on budget and ahead of schedule for a summer 2025 grand opening, with cement pads poured for both structures and work beginning on walls.
Jason Stegner, owner of Cove Built, the company leading construction on the project, said that he was having fun working on the project and that he hopes to have the building roofed by early October, ahead of wet winter weather.
The new city hall and police station are being constructed at the corner of Manzanita Avenue and Classic Street, on the same property where Manzanita’s weekly famers’ market is held.
Work began this spring with extensive site preparations, including knocking down the old school building and Quonset hut that stood on the property, grading the site and doing preparatory seismic mitigation work for the police station.
That work consisted of drilling 100 four-foot-diameter holes to a depth of 40 to 50 feet and filling them with a mixture of sand, concrete and water to stabilize the building’s foundation in the event of soil liquefaction during a seismic event. The holes cover the footprint of the police station, which was separated from the main city hall facility and given more seismic resistance so that it can serve as the city’s emergency management center.
A mistake by a subcontractor also led to the drilling of superfluous holes to the east of the police station for about 20 feet, meaning that area can accommodate a future expansion, should the need arise.
The police station building will also house the city’s information technology equipment in a room with a separate entrance, which will help to preserve the city’s communications capabilities in emergent situations.
City hall itself will house the city council chamber at the west end of the building, three offices and working area to accommodate the city’s six staff, several smaller meeting spaces, with a conference room for meetings with the public, and a secure garage for police vehicles at the east end, with a short driveway off Classic Street. The facility will also have an outdoor staff parking lot behind the garage off Classic Street and public parking at the west end, accessible off Manzanita Avenue.
The building’s entryway will feature a 16-foot ceiling at the front, sloping down to nine feet at the rear of the building. Wooden beams from the Quonset hut that used to stand on the site were salvaged for use in feature walls, as were large glass globes from the school building that will be repurposed as a light fixture in the new space’s lobby.
Three restrooms will also be included in city hall, with a full bathroom off the garage for police use, staff restrooms and a public restroom that will have its own entrance, allowing for independent access during events like the farmers’ market.
Currently, carpenters are working on laying out the wall plates in the buildings, after which framing will begin.
Stegner said that the project had gone to plan so far and that the separation of the facility into two buildings had increased the complexity of installing conduits for utilities. Pouring the concrete slabs in the summertime also increased the complexity of the job, requiring the construction team to water down the slabs during the curing process to minimize cracking, but Stegner said that these factors had been considered during the planning process.
After the framing is complete, work will begin on installing the buildings’ roofs and windows, so that work can move inside during inclement weather.
Stegner said that as the project progressed, his confidence in both budgetary and timeline projections is increasing and that he expected to hand the project over to the city in May 2025. Manzanita City Manager Leila Aman said that it would take about two months from that point for staff to prepare the building for its grand opening.
Aman said that she was happy the construction was being carried out by a local company, noting that it helped to keep costs down and communication open. “That’s, I think, been a big advantage to this project, the local knowledge, the local contractors, the local subs,” Aman said. “It results in a better project overall, a better team dynamic but also getting a better cost.”
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