Auburn advances public safety facility design while trimming proposed indoor firing range

Auburn city officials presented a near-final design and financing update Oct. 20 for a new public safety facility on Mined Avenue, proposing to keep shared training and rolling-asset storage while removing an indoor firing range from the plan to reduce cost.

City Manager Phil Croll told the council the schematic design is about 50% complete and that the engineering team’s current total project estimate is $48,236,424. That figure carries a roughly 5% contingency the city expects to reduce toward 2.5% as design advances and value-engineering occurs. Available offsets include $2.5 million in congressional delegated spending and a $500,000 grant for a burn-building; removing the indoor range would reduce scope by about $1.5 million, Croll said.

The proposed building would place fire apparatus bays on the west side and police functions on the east, with a sallyport and adjacent detention/processing area for short-term detainees. Fire Chief Chase described apparatus-bay layouts intended to minimize backing risks, and said the station design includes a hose…