RALEIGH -- A public safety center project that sharply divided city officials and residents for weeks won't be built soon.
After tangling over the scope, design and price of the proposed $205 million Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center, the Raleigh City Council deadlocked 4-4 in a Tuesday vote over whether to start construction.
The building, which would be home to the city's fire, police, emergency communication and information technology departments, was shelved indefinitely. No more money will be spent on it.
Already, the city has spent $22 million on design plans and the purchase and renovation of two buildings for police to move into during construction.
"We should not make a short-term decision for the sake of political expediency," councilwoman Nancy McFarlane said in a plea to pass the project before the vote.
The decision on the 17-story glass tower was a blow to Mayor Charles Meeker, Raleigh's elected leader since 2001. Meeker had pushed hard to get it approved. The mayor had offered a compromise to lower the amount of an accompanying task increase needed to help pay for the building. Plans for $705,000 in public art were downsized.
That couldn't overcome the opposition of council members Thomas Crowder, Bonner Gaylord, John Odom and Russ Stephenson.
Odom opposed the building because of the proposed tax increase. The others took issue with the tower's design, which they said was too costly and could put the city's emergency responders in an unsafe facility that might be prone to terrorist attack.
"We never looked at this in the context of what we can afford," Gaylord said.
In addition to Meeker and McFarlane, council members Mary-Ann Baldwin and James West backed the Lightner Center.
By building now, the council could have taken advantage of millions in savings because of low construction costs and low interest rates on loans, McFarlane said.
Five years of planning
The Lightner Center had been in the works for five years, but it first faced resistance in December, when City Manager Russell Allen outlined a plan to raise property taxes by 8 percent to pay for it and $250 million in other public works projects.
The mention of a property tax increase generated criticism when the local and national economies are in the worst shape since the Depression. Conservative groups jumped in to oppose the project and called for it to go before voters in a bond referendum. The council office was flooded with hundreds ofe-mail messages, letters and calls about the project.
Keys to a rebirth
Meeker said he sees three scenarios that might revitalize the project:
The council could figure out a way to pay for it without a tax increase.
One of the opposed council members could have a change of heart.
A new council could take the project up, a scenario at least two years away.
Now city staff members have to figure out how to meet their immediate needs. Both Allen and Emergency Communications Chief Barry Furey have said that the current emergency communications center, housed in the bottom of City Hall, is too small. Also, expensive dispatch equipment needs to be replaced.
Police Chief Harry Dolan is moving forward with plans to have all police leave their facilities at McDowell and Salisbury streets. That building would have been torn down to make room for a new building.
Police will be out of there by the end of the month, moved to interim offices on Six Forks Road in North Raleigh and at a downtown police district office on Cabarrus Street.
But without a bigger facility, Dolan said he doesn't know what to do in the long term.
"We have such great needs," he said.
