The Ohio-based development company that is building a new shopping center at High School Road and Highway 305 has offered to build the city’s new police station within the development, but a 20-year lease for the facility comes with a high price tag.
Rent payments would total $21.8 million over the next two decades, according to the company’s offer letter to the city.
Brad Goldberg, vice president of development for Visconsi Companies of Pepper Pike, Ohio, made the lease offer in early December.
Visconsi offered the city a two-story, 24,500-square-foot building within the retail center, and also promised to pay $3 million toward internal improvements.
The location of the police building would be in the center of the Visconsi development, north of the bank and the first retail building on the property.
City council members talk about potential locations for a new police building at their meeting next week.
According to city officials, an option to build the new police station on a city-owned gravel lot near city hall but south of Bainbridge Performing Arts isn’t supported by Winslow merchants and others downtown. The facility’s proposed traffic connection to Erickson Avenue also appears to be “problematic,” according to the city.
Other locations are still under consideration, including a property just north and adjacent to city hall on Madison Avenue, and land known as the “Coultas property” on New Brooklyn Road.
The Coultas property is 1.89-acre parcel adjacent to the Bainbridge Island Fire Department’s Station 21, and is appraised for $232,000, according to the city. It is expected to fetch a higher sales price; an adjacent 2.1-acre parcel sold for $2.1 million in November 2013.
The city is still looking for other viable sites, and officials noted that “options that have yet-to-be-determined may still emerge.”
Visconsi made its rental offer in early December via a “letter of intent” that was sent to the city.
Annual rent payments would total $943,250 during the agreement’s first five years, and would rise in five-year increments thereafter.
Annual rent payments would top out at $1.2 million in the final five years of the proposed 20-year contract.
The city also asked Visconsi if it was willing to sell a piece of the property on High School Road, and Goldberg said in a Jan. 6 email to City Manager Doug Schulze that the company would consider selling a piece of the property for $2 million.
The price includes part of the new road, utilities and other work Visconsi has done on the property since last year to get the land ready for development.
Goldberg also told Schulze the company would need an answer from the city soon on a possible purchase.
“In order for us to sell the city the land at this price we must have a quick close. 60-90 days,” Goldberg wrote.
Bainbridge officials have been talking for more than a year about building a new police station to replace its outdated facility on Winslow Way.
Earlier discussions centered on building a combined police-fire facility with the Bainbridge Island Fire Department, but the city later abandoned that approach and decided to seek a solo facility.
The Bainbridge Island Fire Department is seeking approval from Bainbridge voters for a $16 million bond measure in the Feb. 10 Special Election that would pay for new and improved fire facilities.
