REEDLEY – Always preferring the more fiscally prudent option, the city of Reedley has found a way to expand its City Hall and Police Department offices without incurring millions in debt payments.
With approval granted by the Reedley City Council on Oct. 8, the city plans to purchase the former Bank of America building located diagonally across from City Hall in downtown Reedley for just $1.3 million. The council voted 4-0 in favor of the purchase, with Mayor pro tem Matthew Tuttle recusing himself from the item due to a conflict of interest as an owner of property bordering the lot in question.
“This is a big deal for the city to be considering an additional facility; the last time we did any real expansion of city facilities was all the way back last century in 1996,” Assistant City Manager Paul Melikian said.
Both the Reedley Police Department and the City Hall facilities are completely out of space. To help with this issue, Melikian said the city put a double-wide trailer in the parking lot between the county office building and the police department as a temporary solution in 2015. Nine years later, the trailer is still there and functioning but is deteriorating, Melikian said.
The building at 936 G St., which held Reedley’s Bank of America branch until it closed in August, will ideally become Reedley’s new city hall. The police department would then take over the current offices occupied by city staff, alleviating space constraints felt by all city employees for a number of years.
“We have some very unconventional work environments with staff that are working in extremely close proximity,” Melikian said. “It’s a difficult situation. We are making it work, however; working toward this solution is giving us sort of a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Reedley will use just $300,000 from funds set aside for future facility needs to buy the building, Melikian said. The other $1 million will come from American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding that was allocated during the COVID-19 pandemic for this very purpose.
Although the city plans to buy the building for $1.3 million, the council approved spending of up to $1.5 million to cover any transaction costs associated with the purchase and potential maintenance needs once the building belongs to the city.
The council also authorized City Manager Nicole Zieba to work with a design/architecture firm to complete an initial planning and design phase that will help the city know what needs to be done to the building to make it usable for public-facing offices and how much that will cost.
Melikian said that while there are a few offices within the building — including spaces currently occupied by a satellite medical office that has one year left on its lease — it was constructed to be a bank branch, not an office building, so it will need some work done despite being in decent condition. However, the building was constructed in 1980, so Melikian said staff are optimistic that it is up to code in major areas.
In addition to a vault that the city may or may not keep, the building has a partial second story but has no elevator. In order to be ADA-compliant, the city would need to add an elevator if it wants the second floor to be open to the public. Perks of the space include ample parking and the proximity to the current City Hall and Pioneer Park.
Even with uncertainty around renovations and costs, the city is already getting a better deal with the purchase of this building than it would have if it built a brand new facility. Melikian said the city previously engaged a design firm to make plans for a new facility and determined that “day-one construction costs would be about $16 million.” If the city took on that much debt, the 30-year cost of the building would amount to approximately $30 million once that debt was paid off.
The city plans to bring forward design options and ideas to the council at some point in 2025, Melikian said.
“There’s lots to work through still, but we have this rare opportunity right now,” Zieba said. “This building was not on the market. We approached the property owner … when we heard (Bank of America) was going out. This building across the street has been up for sale for 12 years, and we kind of used that as an example of, ‘Hey, you don’t want to be sitting on a building for 12 years.’”
Zieba said the Bank of America building was appraised at $2.5 million.
“We offered $1.3 (million) and they took the deal,” she said.
Members of the city council said they were excited and grateful for the opportunity provided to the city by the building’s current owners, as well as the work city staff put in to make the deal happen.
