(January 6) The San Bernardino International Airport Authority has increased by $2.72 million the amount of money it is charging the county for a 25-year lease on hangar space for the sheriff’s department aviation division.
According to a report to the board of supervisors from Terry Thompson, the director of the county’s real estate services department, his division received notice that the authority was experiencing cost increases that necessitated ”increasing the contract price from $9,600,000 to $12,320,000 for the construction of the Sheriff’s Department Aviation Facility.”
Word of the increase came nine months after the closure of Rialto Airport, where the sheriff’s aviation division has been located for the last several decades, and some three months before the aviation division is set to leave Rialto itself.
The sheriff’s Aviation Division is the last hangar tenant scheduled to relocate out of Rialto, with a projected departure date of April 15. At that point, the entirety of the sheriff’s aviation division is to be transferred into a 61,640-square-foot aviation facility now under preparation at San Bernardino International Airport.
San Bernardino International Airport is located on the grounds of the former Norton Air Force Base, which is located at the confluence of the San Bernardino, Highland, Loma Linda and Redlands boundaries. The San Bernardino International Airport Authority is a joint powers agency, made up of the cities of San Bernardino, Loma Linda, Highland and Colton and the county of San Bernardino, which is committed to the conversion of the facility to civilian aviation use.
On February 25, 2014, the county board of supervisors approved a $9.6 million, twenty-five year lease with the San Bernardino International Airport Authority for a new aviation facility for the sheriff consisting of approximately 50,000 square feet of hangar space for aircraft storage and maintenance, 11,640 square feet for office space and other aviation related site improvements on approximately eight acres located at the San Bernardino International Airport based on the need to relocate from the now closed Rialto Municipal Airport and to provide additional hangar and office space to accommodate the expanded aviation needs of the sheriff’s department.
According to Thompson, “On November 7, 2014, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority received construction bids for the project. The San Bernardino International Airport Authority (SBIAA) indicated that the bids reflected increased costs that resulted from additional requirements by the city of San Bernardino related to the fire suppression systems; and additional requirements required by the Federal Aviation Administration related to the heliport designation. SBIAA and county staff reviewed the bids and the projected soft costs, and recommend that the project construction budget (including a contingency allowance) be revised as follows: construction $9,750,000; construction contingency $975,000; and soft costs (design, permits and inspection) $1,595,000, for a budget total of $12,320,000.
On December 17, 2014, the SBIAA board approved the amendments to both the lease agreement and the work letter agreement based on the revised project budget.
The total rent for the initial twenty-five year lease term for the sheriff’s department aviation facilities to be leased from San Bernardino International Airport Authority is $12,320,000, and will be paid in full, for the entire lease term, upon completion of the construction of the facilities. The funding sources are $4,121,878 from the city of Rialto; $1 million from the sheriff’s state asset seizure funds; $7,198,122 from discretionary capital in the county general fund, from which $4,478,122 was appropriated on a vote of the board of supervisors in the 2013-14 capital improvement program budget, $1,456,440 was taken out of excess funding from the sheriff’s crime lab expansion project, $1,063,560 was provided from the cancellation of the High Desert Juvenile Detention Center Secondary
Water Source Project, and $200,000 from savings on the High Desert Detention Center expansion project.