Manteca’s leaders are expected this year to start thinking about what to do with the Civic Center that former Councilwoman Debby Moorhead once described as emulating the architecture of a 1970s Taco Bell.
Moorhead made the off-the-cuff comments during a 2020 council discussion that led to what was then the third attempt in 18 years by elected leaders to address space needs at 1001 W. Center St.
It was a reference to how the architecture of Manteca’s city hall reminded her of the Taco Bell architecture of the 1970s right down to the brown slump stone blocks and the angle of the roof tile.
Moorhead, nor the rest of the council at the time that included Gary Singh and Dave Breitenbucher when Ben Cantu was mayor, was worried about what the Civic Center looked like.
They were more concerned about the less-than-stellar experience the public had when trying to conduct business at city hall.
It ranged from a cramped police lobby that would struggle to hold a Chevrolet Suburban to people having to roam around the civic center campus to find the city department they needed to access.
The result of that third try — derailed from advancing beyond a curious look due to the pandemic and Manteca going through seven city managers in five years — was a $100,000 space needs study.
The biggest feature of that consulting endeavor was Manteca would be best served by a city hall that had a central lobby where residents could go to access all city departments.
It is what the City of Lathrop has at its city hall.
City Manager Toni Lundgren noted modifying the Civic Center in some manner will surface on the to-do radar sometime this year given the new police station breaking ground this year in the 600 block of South Main Street could be completed in 2028.
That would allow either the repurposing of the space police currently occupy or possibly tearing it down as the first step in an overall campus redo.
What direction that takes will have everything to do with current space issues, the need to accommodate growth and the cost.
Measure Q wedded with government facilities fees could be tapped.
First, though, the city needs to build and finance the new police station and the sixth fire station.
The only definite goal that has been identified going forward is bringing the Community Development Department back on campus.
In 2020, the Community Development Department relocated to the second floor of the Hensley Building just over a block away on the corner of Union Road and Center Street.
The 2020 look at
city hall space needs
Then Acting City Manager Miranda Lutzow in 2020 said all options would be examined including staying onsite, looking at four other sites, and — depending upon a final decision — to either repurpose or sell the existing Civic Center campus.
The 2020 study went nowhere but it did say the most economical way to move forward was staying on site and possibly acquiring property across Center Street that runs below transmission lines.
That would provide for Civic Center parking to allow for full utilization of the campus as well as accommodate what would likely be a phased project.
The first two efforts — a masterplan commissioned in 2004 and the acquisition of a building to renovate as a new police department in 2006 — had gone nowhere. The city ended up spending nearly $7.6 million and had nothing to show for the money they spent.
A September 2020 staff report seeking authorization to seek proposals from firms to do the necessary assessment and initial planning identified three potential alternate sites.
They were:
*Placing it at Union Road Park next to the city corporation yard that is adjacent to the golf course and Morezone Baseball Field.
*Repurposing Library Park and Wilson Park.
*Using the city owned parking lot that is in the form of a triangle behind the south side of the 200 block of West Yosemite Avenue and west of South Maple Street that dead ends at the Tidewater Bikeway. The request for proposals noted that the parking lot location would require a parking structure.
The assessment completed in 2020 looked at both the police and city hall space needs.
2004 city hall plan had
a $34 million price tag
The city spent more than $120,000 in 2004 on an assessment and preliminary schematics for expanding on the current campus by going up to four stories. At the same time, they were also pursuing replacing the existing library with a 30,000-square-foot, two-story structure for $22 million.
The revamped city hall campus in 2004 had a price tag of $34 million and was designed to take care of the city’s needs through 2025.
The council at the time balked at the cost and opted not to pump up growth fees to pay for a new city hall.
As for the library, they decided to put all of their eggs in one basket and bank on securing a grant to build a replacement library from the proceeds of a statewide library bond.
Manteca applied twice for library funding and failed to secure money each time. The city dropped pursuit of a new library at that point.
They did move forward on a possible new police headquarters. The city spent $2.6 million in RDA funds to buy 8.1 acres fronting South Main Street just north of where BR Funsten Flooring is today to build.
The idea was to spend $18 million to develop a criminal justice complex housing police, the Superior Court and district attorney’s offices. The balance of the $34 million — $16 million — was earmarked for the revamp of the Civic Center.
$2.6 million investment
on South Main falls through
The city had worked with the county to devise plans for a satellite Superior Court complex with as many as 25 courtrooms, district attorney and public defender offices as well as a future Manteca Police complex.
Several years later, judges in Stockton pushed hard for a new central court complex to be built first and Manteca thought they found a more cost-effective alternative to expand the police operations into a former photo processing plant just around the corner from the South Main Street at 555 Industrial Park Drive.
The city started running out of space at the police station and general offices at the civic center in 2000.
Part of the police operations — a large chunk of the detective division — at the time was housed a mile away from the department in rented space secured from the county on Moffat Boulevard until portable buildings were added to the police station to provide office space.
The city in 2004 conducted preliminary negotiations with a property owner on Eucalyptus Avenue across from city hall to build an office suite to city specifications.
In 2006, after staff was instructed to address space needs in a more cost-effective manner, the city used Manteca RDA funds to buy the Qualex building at 555 Industrial Park Drive to use as the new police station for $3.6 million. Qualex, with 57,000 square feet, is more than double the size of the current police station built in 1975.
The $4.6 million investment
on Qualex site goes nowhere
After spending almost $1 million on earthquake retrofitting and basic structural upgrades, the council dropped the Qualex project after a state mandate was passed require new police stations with holding cells to have 24/7 correctional officer staffing. That requirement 17 years ago penciled out as a $700,000 annual ongoing cost.
At the same time, the Qualex proposal was being pursued, the council had staff explore other options for the city hall that they hoped would be less expensive than the $16 million estimate the consultant gave them.
One included having a developer build a four-story city hall at the envisioned Yosemite Square office park project proposed at the time on the northeast corner of the Highway 99 and 120 Bypass interchange.
The concept was a lease-purchase approach such as was used to build the golf course clubhouse with additional space built that the city could lease and then eventually expand into as Manteca grew.
That approach also included possibly converting the existing Civic Center into a performing arts/recreation/community center complex since the Senior Center was already located there. The existing office space was envisioned for use for recreation programs and what space wasn’t needed was proposed to be leased as office space to provide a revenue stream.
The council at the time also toyed with opening a satellite city hall operation for services that have the highest general public contact — such as paying utility bills — somewhere in the Central District. That way would be more central to transit systems as well as other amenities such as the library. It was also seen as a way to create traffic for downtown businesses.
None of those proposals went anywhere as the housing crisis hit months later.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
