Eric Swanson, Phoenix city manager, points out the city hall lobby while giving a tour of the Phoenix Government and Public Safety Center.

Combining a fire station, city administration and the police department, the new Phoenix Government and Public Safety Center is nearly ready to open.

The joint venture of the city and Jackson County Fire District 5 came about after the 2020 Almeda Fire destroyed part of the fire operation.

A ribbon cutting and open house will be held at the new building 1:30 to 4 p.m. Friday. The center is located at 112 W. 2nd St. Light refreshments will be served.

“We went from concept to completion in three years,” Deputy City Manager Joe Slaughter said. “We had a concept to meld the city, police and fire.”

After fire officials from both jurisdictions approached the Oregon Legislature with the plan for a single building in 2021, lawmakers responded by approving $16.13 million to help fund the project. Another $319,000 was allocated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The project’s total cost is just shy of $20 million.

The building sits on the same area that supported a fire station and adjacent modular housing unit, police in a 24-by-40-foot doublewide trailer, and city administration in a 60-year-old former library building. The modular unit was damaged in the fire.

Police and administrative personnel will begin moving into the 24,000-square-foot building on Monday. Fire District 5 likely won’t begin occupancy until July.

Folding vertical panel doors for the four-unit fire bay have been delayed but are expected to arrive by mid-June, Fire Chief Aaron Bustard said. The panels are custom-made in Switzerland by the only firm in the world that produces them. Overhead doors take longer to open manually in the event of an electrical failure than do vertical units.

Building construction includes provisions for solar panels in the future, City Manager Eric Swanson said. In all, about $60,000 to use energy-efficient practices will come from Energy Trust of Oregon.

A main entrance foyer provides access to the police and fire operations, and a stairway leads to city administration on the second floor. Bullet-resistant glass is installed in areas where the public will interact with officials.

All three units will benefit from having up-to-date facilities.

A classroom in the police area is large enough that it could host law enforcement training sessions for department and local agency officers. Before, the officers often had to go to Salem or Portland for training, Police Chief Derek Bowker said. The classroom space will also serve as a city emergency operations center.

There will be secure parking for both squad and officers’ personal vehicles for the first time. “We have never had secure parking before,” Bowker said.

Four shaded parking bays will help protect electronic equipment in squad cars from excessive heat that can damage them. Evidence will have an enlarged storage space. In the trailer, it was located in a small dedicated room and two other spaces.

City administration, on the second floor, will have a conference room for the first time in four years. There will also be a rest/sick/lactation room.

Glass windows on the second floor are frosted up to a height of five feet on the building’s north and west sides out of respect for private residences.

A “bullpen” area has been created for planning and building officials. There will be two city staff in the area behind glass, but five work stations so that building inspectors and other officials who work part-time on contracts will have space when they are in the office to meet with the public.

With population growth anticipated, the area will see a lot of use, Slaughter said.

“It’s night and day from where we were. We are projecting it will be there for 50 years. It’s quite an update,” Bustard said of the new fire facilities.

After the Almeda Fire, crews relocated to the fire district’s main station near Talent. Moving back to Phoenix will reduce emergency response times in the city and surrounding areas, Bustard said. The relocation will also help the district serve the recently annexed area north of the city between Highway 99 and Interstate 5.

When it becomes operational, the new station will have three firefighters on duty at all times, up from two before the fire, Bustard said. It will also have a new wildfire and structure engine and a new brush truck. Two other units will also be housed there.

State-of-the-art equipment ventilation and separate storage for turnouts will help ensure air quality in the engine bays. The new station has seven bedrooms, up from four in the modular unit.

All the occupants will have access to a second-floor workout space. Each unit has its own showers.

Building the new center was a mostly smooth process, said officials from Adroit Construction. “We used all local subcontractors,” said Kyle Lumsden, project manager.

With the building taking up nearly all the lot, construction staging could have been difficult. But a lot across 2nd Street owned by the city’s urban renewal agency was used for equipment and materials.

‘We don’t know what we would have done without that parking lot,” said John Gilbert, the project superintendent.

Parking for the building will be in a lot on 2nd Street just to the east that the city purchased. Covered bike parking is included. The city also repaved 2nd Street.

The fire district and the city will be repaying a $3.4-million, 30-year loan from the Oregon Infrastructure Finance Authority to cover costs beyond grant funding. The city will pay its share through increases in general fund tax revenues, which are expected to rise as the city grows, Swanson said. District 5 will repay its share through rent.