HUNTINGTON BEACH : 1906 House Wanted for Police Substation

Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg on Monday will ask the City Council to establish the city’s second police substation in an 85-year-old downtown house.

The substation would be set up in the Shank House, a registered historical landmark on 5th Street at Walnut Avenue.

Locating officers in the house, owned by the City Redevelopment Agency, would resolve the undetermined fate of the vacant building and meet Lowenberg’s call for a year-round police foot patrol downtown.

As redevelopment slowly moves ahead downtown, merchants have been calling for an increased police presence to discourage vandalism, graffiti, burglaries and other crimes, Lowenberg said. The substation would also house the police beach patrol, which now works out of lifeguard headquarters.

The facility would be similar to the substation that opened in September in the Oak View area, which many neighborhood residents have praised.

Lowenberg and other city officials favor Shank House over a street-level office soon to be completed beneath the Main Promenade parking garage.

Because the agency owns the historic home, just $38,250 in onetime renovations would be needed to move the police in by this summer, according to Lowenberg’s cost estimate. Another $14,500 in furnishings would be needed, although officials say the city may already have spare items to equip the substation.

A substation in the garage, on the other hand, would cost the city $74,880 for a three-year lease and related expenses. Another $16,900 in furnishings would be needed. In lieu of cash payment for the garage site, the Redevelopment Agency would grant the owner of the prospective office 40 parking spaces that the agency otherwise would sell to him, Lowenberg said in his report.

The chief has also called for two full-time officers for the substation, which would cost the city about $152,000 per year in salaries and benefits. That cost would be offset either from a proposed utility tax on cable TV subscriptions or city general fund reserves.

Jerry Person, chairman of the city’s Historic Resources Board, said Friday he believes that a police substation would be an ideal use for the Shank House, built for a physician in 1906.

“Not many people are going to break in,” Person joked.

The substation would occupy only the bottom floor of the home. The upper story could be used to house the Huntington Beach Youth Shelter and the city’s Conference and Visitors Bureau, saving the city rent costs for those facilities, agency officials said.