OCEANSIDE — More than a decade overdue, the Oceanside police department is one step closer to relocating its headquarters to a facility near El Corazon Park after the Oceanside City Council approved the first phase of a recently-completed police-needs assessment study.
At the same time, the council also approved staff’s request to change the scope of services in the second phase to include staff’s “ideal location” for a new police headquarters: 1280 Rancho Del Oro Road, located in the Ocean Ranch Industrial Area across the road from El Corazon.
Since 1999, the Oceanside Police Department has been located in the Mission Plaza Real shopping center at 3855 Mission Avenue, a 49,108-square-foot facility with a parking lot for police vehicles that was supposed to only serve as a temporary location for 10 years.
Although a study for a potential new facility was completed in 2009, the police department has remained in the same location 13 years longer than expected.
The city hired LPA Design Studios in 2020 to update the decade-old study. This agreement included two phases, the first of which was to update the previous study and the second to figure out if and where the new headquarters should be constructed.
Now that efforts have been refocused to the nearly 6-acre 1280 Rancho Del Oro site, LPA Design Studios will remain on board with the city to complete the site’s construction documents for a multi-story facility there for a revised total contract of $171,325.
“I’m very excited to see this,” said Councilmember Christopher Rodriguez at the Aug. 24 council meeting.
Rodriguez suggested the current police headquarters could either be repurposed or resold once the relocation happens. Staff has also considered options for the current facility including an expanded site for other city departments or a mixed-use residential development through a public-private partnership that could help fund the new police facility.
Rodriguez also proposed for staff to consider installing jail cells at the new facility to reduce reliance on the Vista jail.
“Yes they’re expensive, yes we have to staff them, but it’s a huge opportunity to consider as part of the project,” Rodriguez said.
Mayor Esther Sanchez noted that neither the federal or county governments were interested in funding jail cells as part of the project.
Joan Bockman, president of Friends of El Corazon, was pleased to see the new police headquarters site wouldn’t be located in the park as previous discussions have suggested.
Now that the city has settled on the Rancho Del Oro location, the city can once again pursue new fire stations. Earlier in March, the majority of Council voted to halt any construction of additional fire stations until the city made more progress on finding a new headquarters for the police. The move did not apply to the construction of the new Fire Station No. 1, which had its groundbreaking ceremony earlier this summer.
