The first Engage Durango forum of 2026 was focused on a major city construction project slated to begin in September: the joint new city hall and police station at 201 E. 12th St.
Project partners from FCI Constructors, engineering consultant HDR and management firm Artaic Group presented an overview of the design process, construction plans, and an alternative concept for the new city hall and police station.
The city fielded questions about what is to become of the existing city hall and police department buildings across the street from one another in the 900 block of East Second Avenue and scrutiny over the change in design plans.
Artaic Group Senior Project Manager John Usery said there are some changes between the working conceptual plan and the 2023 conceptual plan necessitated by International Building Code structural requirements.
Foremost, plans to turn the building at 215 E. 12th St., formerly known as Big Picture High School, into a new police station and to build an underground parking garage have been scrapped because of structural requirements of the new facilities.
Instead, the building will be demolished and a new police station will be built behind the former historic high school and planned city hall building at 201 E. 12th St., Usery said.
Durango School District temporarily relocated Big Picture High School to the Durango Tech Center in 2023, and the high school will relocate again to a permanent location at 281 Sawyer Drive later this year. The city’s Community Development and Engineering departments currently occupy the former Big Picture building at 215 E. 12th St.
Usery said IBC Risk Category IV building standards would require significant structural reinforcements that would drive up the cost of converting the 215 E. 12th St. building.
With the elimination of the parking garage from plans, the city is now examining surface-level parking options, he said. Police parking will be located in a secure and enclosed space on the campus, and city hall staff parking will be located on the west side of the historic former high school building.
“Our site currently accommodates roughly half the needed parking spaces for both the PD and city hall,” he said. “We are exploring other solutions within a quarter-mile radius, looking at the existing city hall site and existing PD, to satisfy all the parking requirements for these buildings.”
Charles Shaw, owner of the The Smiley Building to the east of the site in question, suggested the new concept will cost more than the $61 million bond measure voters approved for the city hall/police station project in April and asked why the structural requirements weren’t identified before the bond measure election.
“Is this actually a good site now that you’re demolishing the building? You have surface parking in a pretty fancy residential neighborhood, all night security lights, wall,” he said. “Maybe we need to reexamine whether this is good.”
Assistant City Manager Bob Brammer said the 2023 conceptual plan was made to come up with ballpark cost estimates and give the public an idea of what the joint city hall and police station campus would look like.
The $61 million bond measure gave the city the exact dollar amount it has to work with, he said.
“Now we’re going through all the issues … to come up with a master plan for this actual project,” he said. “It’s all coming in alignment now with the groups that we have to make this a reality with the financial abilities that we have, to be able to spend the money we have, that’s allocated by the bond.”
FCI Project Manager Steven Stewart said construction is scheduled to begin in September and is projected to last just over two years.
“It will start as a smaller job. Site demo. And then city hall construction,” he said. “Then it will grow over the two-year span to include the police department.”
He said a one-way route for construction vehicles is planned to lead from the north end of the campus eastward to avoid construction traffic circling the neighborhood. Public parking spaces outside 201 E. 12th St. and behind the former high school on 13th Street will be reserved for city staff and construction parking during development.
Several community updates are planned through the spring, he said. The general schedule is:
- Landscape design updates in May.
- Campus and community connectivity updates in May.
- Police department community spaces and exterior updates in June.
- City hall community space interior design updates in June.
cburney@durangoherald.com
