Travis County Commissioners Court
June 6, 2006
Item 24
24. Consider and take appropriate action for approval of the schematic design to remodel the 5555 airport boulevard building.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioner.
>> more than one copy of that letter, right? Okay. Good afternoon.
>> or good evening.
>> we will make our presentation short. Last -- last March, 2006, we purchased haverty building, now we are coming to the court to present to you a program and schematic design for the past two months we have been meeting with the user and the tenant of the -- or the future tenant of this building, come up to a agreement about the layout and resecure their endorsement. As you can see, it's on your backup for the -- for the 11 by 17 sheet where everyone is signed off on the project. At this time, I would like to ask the court approval to -- to move the -- the ips data center from the airport boulevard to haverty building, because of so many logistical things. Mainly first, if we move them to the haverty buildings, we save money, about -- we will save the following items, first, we don't have to build a five ton -- elevators and airport boulevard in phase two for the heavy equipment to move to the second floor. We don't have to beef up the structure in the second floor. Also we don't have to build loading docks, plus minor other issues. Those are savings if we move the data center to haverty which does have a loading dock. I believe there's about $350,000 savings if we move it to haverty. This time I would like to turn over to -- to -- to this presentation to jim to explain to you about the square footage and the spaces each department is allocated.
>> Commissioners, judge -- the building is about 58,000 square feet. The tenants, if you approve the its disaster center move, the sheriff takes up the bulk, the red area is the fire marshal. The yellow areas are held aside as unassigned space for future occupancy as the Commissioners might see fit. There's a loading dock here which we are preserving, this area here is a common space with restrooms and vending that we are intending to small, then exit corridors through here. The building is in pretty good shape. It was a former furniture store, of course, it's mostly empty inside. Got extremely tall ceilings, which we will have to lower a little bit. The air conditioning equipment will need to be replaced. It's a kind of nearing the end of its useful life span so this would be the logical time to do that. That's -- that's pretty straightforward office space, it should work extremely well at the locations -- the location is good. The exterior of the building will need very little work, signage and parking seems to be adequate for this point in time.
>> that was my question, the backup said 123 f.t.e.'s. They also quite a few of these folks have -- have assigned vehicles as well. What is the space allottage for haverty, how many spaces with this building?
>> this -- we have right now 97 space for haverty. There's -- there's an operational issue with the sheriff. There's for instance the swat team, there's about 17 of them right there. They will not be there during the day. They will come early in the morning and leave before anybody else come in. I would -- I would turn over to mike, he has more information on that.
>> Commissioner, mike layman with the Travis County sheriff's office. We have worked with f.m. On this. Rewe recognized right off the bat that we were trying to put quite a few people into space with some limited parking. I think that as roger said, we would like to talk to some staff on there that we are counting for the total count for the building who are basically in and out staff. That are there to check, get their paperwork in the morning, then they are out in the field deployed all day. Community service officers who spend the majority of their time in the community. That's not to say that it won't be close. I think that we have tried to explore some options. We are pretty much stuck with what we have there. At least as parking goes. I know that one of the sheriff's goals is a little bit different there than it is in the downtown area where if we have a visitor, they have the chance to just find parking wherever in the downtown area. It's a little more awkward up there. There's no real street parking for, you know, customers, the citizens who would need to come to the sheriff's headquarters. I know that we have talked to the fire marshal's office as to look at load and what they might anticipate on visitors. We have got two handicapped spaces there and trying to go for about 10 for the entire building for visitors. And hoping that that's sufficient.
>> okay. But we still haven't. So where are these folks supposed to park? Because I have a suspicion that they will go into the defined parking that we have phase 1, phase 2, the other airport boulevard that has a lot of in and out visitor's parking. So how do we not have a train wreck here?
>> there's a possibility -- there's a possibility that we rent the space from chair king, remember chair king going to give us 50 spaces any time we requested those spaces. About 50 rental spaces in chair king for 10-dollar per month. Per space.
>> that's quite a dance.
>> that's a way distance.
>> it's --
>> I know they can, I can hear the complaining about I知 the one that's going to walk --
>> I can guarantee you that the so will take their thing, they will bleed over, push dana and nelda's group into going further over. I知 just -- I知 just -- well not knowing how many assigned vehicles that you have got that go here as well. Because there are people that will come and pick up a car, but that's taking up two spaces, it's the problem that we have got downtown as well.
>> when we reviewed our parking, individuals, we wouldn't have the situation of double parking because the building would not be staffed 24/7. It's our intent to not leave vehicles there at any given time. Our people who have assigned vehicles would.
>> bring.
>> -- we would not have duplicative vehicles there. We have already been straightforward with our employees, knowing that it's tight. We are not going to assign spaces to individuals because there's no sense if I am out on vacation that day or sick that day, that my -- my space sit empty when it could be utilized by a co-worker or the public as need be. Our main goal is to make sure that the public has adequate parking there and to not push them. I mean, I will be honest, Commissioner, I have scouted several blocks away from there. We have already had early discussion with leave johnson ford as to what's available down their alleyways. We have tried explore whatever is possible out there knowing from the beginning that -- that it was pretty tight.
>> unfortunately the its disaster doesn't add any parking.
>> they make a wonderful partner from our perspective on that. I know that gmi, roger has been out there, we have tried to explore, I mean, I hate to say this, in 20 years we've had the 7th and west avenue of triple parking cars which is rather time consuming to move two cars to get your car's office. As the sheriff's office we have done it before, we can do it again if we need to.
>> don't ticket yourself.
>> I will try not to. We don't have any street parking in this situation.
>> how many square feet does the sheriff presently have?
>> the -- the present square footage is approximately 42,000. In the gall building.
>> so they are not -- there's no extra space?
>> well, actually, what's happening is that -- four of the sheriff's divisions are staying behind that are court related, so we are actually moving not quite everybody. The other consideration is that the galt building is stacked three high, it's a three-story building, so there's an awful lot of -- of inefficiencies in -- in elevator shafts, stairwells and interior circulation of air conditioning chases. So by locating them on a single floor, we end up with a whole lot more efficient space.
>> because I see that, you know, when you look at the layout, I mean there's quite a bit of space. I mean here is, you know, expansion space, 2100 square feet. Community room expansion space, 860 square feet. I -- I don't know. Do we have a -- do we have to work out all of that kind of stuff mow?
>> great, Commissioner, one of the things that we were tasked with early on being informed, you know, by f.m. That this was hopefully the last home of the sheriff's office for -- for foreseeable future, was to make sure that we built within our design room for expansion is that if we build a conference room there, that in five to 10 years, if we increase staff that we will eat up that conference room. Hence why you see some of that open space we have tried to design there, rather than pushing it all back to the back where we would have inefficiencies of saying well okay we need to expand, here you people go way back in the closet in the back. We have tried to build that throughout our design. Concept. Again, knowing that this is -- that this is supposed to be the headquarters for -- for a long period of time.
>> let me tell you what makes me nervous about this. I had a meeting with the constable of precinct 2 last last week. And only to find out that there now is not enough space, there's not enough parking,, you know, there's -- how do we -- you are telling me what? I mean because we went through this exhaustive making sure that we had, which is the reason that we are buying the building, doubling the space, I mean, I am now told by the constable that we don't have the space out there for the parking and for all of the needs that we have. I went wow.
>> not true.
>> I will tell you right now, I questioned that.
>> we did -- Commissioner, we did lots of programming with the pretenant, constable van and judge [indiscernible] cscd. We are going to come back to you all in two weeks, you know, to tell you about the result of our program.
>> so you have heard the same thing that --
>> well not exactly like that.
>> [multiple voices]
>> being space.
>> there's a -- there's a discussion on that. Commissioner. It's not just like straight right, you know, I would defer the discussion of precinct 2 for two more weeks. I would bring it forward and leslie strictner is the project manager on that, we did lots of very detailed programming. Yes, we have enough space in there. We are going to shell some area on the second floor. We have tight, a little bit parking space in there, we are going to discuss it, we are going to see a way to deal with it. But if you can give us the room for two more weeks, we can bring this forward to you.
>> the only reason that I知 saying is it because it makes me nervous to think of what we are doing out here, looking at the chair king, talking to lief johnson, I can see what starts happening, we really have a building we are really tight for with personnel and we all know what happens, I mean, people start complaining about well I have got to park in the chair king or I have got to park in an alleyway across the street.
>> if we have a problem down the road, it's prudent for us to look at some other alternative down the road if we need them. I知 not saying that's what it is right now. But they are working with the sheriff right now, on their operation. What we did here in the internal space layout, I think that's very efficient Commissioner because in the future they are going within their space, they are not going to say I need some of your space. Now in the future designed right now as we speak, right now, it's for five years expansion. Now, what you could see right here, another five years expansion for them that they have any major expansion of their operation.
>> okay.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 12:54 PM