VALLEJO – The Vallejo City Council directed City Manager Harry Black to pare back a design and financing plan for a new police headquarters site on Tuesday while balking at a design with an estimated price tag topping $162 million.
The City Council voted unanimously to direct Black to return with an analysis on how to “scale back” the design plan for the planned Vallejo Community Safety Center, as well as several options for financing a simpler design of the building.
Architect Indigo Hammond and Playle Architects, LLP projected a cost of up to $162 million for the new site as currently designed, and presented multiple cost reduction options for the council to consider.
The architect compared the site to similar projects in Mountain View, at $193.5 million for a 75,000-square-foot headquarters, and Palo Alto at $135.5 million for 56,000 square feet.
The Vallejo Police Department currently operates out of 111 Amador St. on a 1.1-acre site with a 19,200-square-foot, 65-year-old building. The original proposal would relocate the adjacent 4.3-acre corporation yard, currently full of public vehicles, to a new location and expand the Police Department across the 5.4-acre property for about 89,000 square feet of new facilities.
The proposal Indigo shared Tuesday would take about 32 months to build, and is designed for about 200 sworn staff. But, as several councilmembers pointed out, the department currently has about 86 sworn officers.
Indigo made recommendations for some changes to save money, such as removing the new headquarters’ third floor to save $17.8 million. The architect also prepared an alternative site concept that would leave two acres of the existing corporation yard and one acre of the existing headquarters site, while the new main building would be constructed on a smaller 2.3-acre portion of the site with a three-story, 68,000-square-foot main building. Indigo estimated this concept would reduce construction to about 22 months, and save up to $36 million.
Despite these suggested revisions, multiple councilmembers criticized how the project has come together, attributing its cost and scope to decisions made by previous City Councils.
“This is a master class in how not to go about public design,” Mayor Andrea Sorce said. “At every step of the process it has been completely bungled and become an unmitigated disaster.”
Sorce said the current council has been put in the position of cleaning up “really, really bad decisions” made by previous councils, and compared the project to the White House ballroom design. She said the previous council and city staff “lied about the budget and finances” on hand to afford the project.
Councilmember Diosdado Matulac said the project considered the largest proposal possible, without considering what pencils out. “I don’t think anyone planned for the exponential increase of construction costs,” he said. “Now we’ve got sticker shock. We went about this the wrong way from day one.”
Matulac said the city needs to give the department “what they minimally need,” although he added, “If they need to get a little bit of fluff in there, I’m OK with it.”
The city has been planning for a new police station to replace the current headquarters since 2017. It purchased a building at 400 Mare Island Way for a new station in 2019. In 2020, the city awarded a contract to Indigo to handle the project design, and in 2023 voted to recommend a city-owned site at 111 Amador St. following controversy over the use of 400 Mare Island Way, which is being held as debt collateral.
The council voted in September 2025 to use a portion of settlement funds with biotech giant Monsanto to provide an additional $746,200 to cover a $1.5 million design review process and advance to a bid, despite some councilmembers expressing frustration at escalating costs and delays for the new headquarters.
Councilmember Peter Bregenzer said in the past, the project total came to less than $100 million, and the scope has ballooned over time. He said he doesn’t understand adding other buildings “when we can’t even afford the main building.”
“This needs to be ratcheted down,” he said. “The city is doing everything it can to make this project not work.”
The council also questioned how to fund the site without further cutbacks. Black said, for example, that if the council decides to set aside $9 million of the city’s debt service capacity for 25 years at a 4% interest rate, it could generate $140 million in bond proceeds, which won’t fully cover a project which already surpasses $160 million.
Indigo’s architects told the council the current design incorporated feedback and requests from the Vallejo Police Department. When they added that this design may be too small for what the city needs, Black said, “That’s not what this exercise is. That’s not your job.”
In public comment, Rebekah Truemper, who is running for the District 5 City Council seat, asked who vetted the project, saying, “We are spending an awful lot of money on architecture on two different building sites.”
“I’m a little flabbergasted at how expensive this is shaping up to be,” she said.
Resident Anne Carr said she thinks since the project design advanced, “There has been a huge feature creep on the building.”
“I think we need to strip things down to what is necessary, versus the dreamboat, the perfect building,” she said.
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