UA official hopes to move UAPD out of defunct facility

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Officer Jason Dehmer gets his equipment out of his locker in the quarters of the UAPD building yesterday. The UA foundation will lend $3 million to build a new UAPD facility. Once approved by the Board of Regents, the building should be completed by mid-2000.

The UA will ask the Arizona Board of Regents for approval Friday to build a 2-3 story, 15,000 square foot police building at East First Street and North Campbell Avenue. The University of Arizona Police Department would move out of its current housing, which the school says is deficient in space and technology.

"It is a deteriorated facility that cannot operate like it should," said Joel Valdez, University of Arizona senior vice president for business affairs. "They are squeezed. The place is too small."

The new building would be paid for by the UA Foundation and leased to the university for 20 years, at a cost of $250,000 per year. Valdez said UA's lease payments would come from interest earned on the school's cash holdings.

After 20 years, the building's title would revert to the UA. If construction is approved, UAPD could move in by March, 2000.

Valdez said another reason to move the facility is to satisfy the university's long-term goal of creating more parking spaces. A construction plan for the parking structure will be proposed to the regents this spring.

"It's a timing issue here - I need to get the cops out quick," Valdez said. "I cannot build a parking structure until they get the police out of there."

UAPD's current south location, on the corner of North Santa Rita Avenue and East Sixth Street, was built as temporary quarters in 1987 out of modular, prefabricated units.

The department and its responsibilities keep growing but the building cannot expand to effectively house the additional computers and personnel needed to handle the additional tasks, UA Police Chief Harry Hueston said.

"It was built for 30 people and we have 60 some working in it," Hueston said. "The type of construction we have is grossly inadequate and not designed for 24 (hours per day) by seven (days per week)."

Walking through the building, the inadequacies are evident. Offices built for one employee now house two or three, while hallways double as locker rooms. The space is so tight that visitors in the waiting room are at risk of being hit by a swinging office door.

The building does not have a meeting room.

Regent President Judy Gignac said yesterday she will need to listen to the school's presentation to see where the funding will be shifted from before deciding how she will vote.

"The current facilities are less than adequate, but what is considered adequate, and at what cost?" she asked. "I haven't reached a conclusion."

The UAPD has other facilities that could be consolidated into the one new building, including an evidence storage facility located at the UA Motor Pool, and two houses it occupies on east Lester Street.

"We have a variety of functions going out of three areas that should be under one roof," Hueston said. "We are divided as an organization."

The proposal includes $400,000 for technological service. Hueston said new technology was needed to handle the increased number of fire and smoke alarms and blue safety lights added with the campus expansion.

Before moving into the prefabricated building, the UAPD's south location was housed in the UA Facilities Management building for 16 years, Hueston said. The north location was located in two rooms of the UA Cancer Center from 1990-1994, before moving into the houses it now occupies.

The regents will be meeting at the UA memorial Union.