Ceremony Marks Foothill Station Expansion : Police: Cramped quarters will be remodeled and a new building added. Chief Williams hails the project as a ‘new groundbreaking.’

At the Foothill Police Station, an “office” sometimes amounts to a desk and breathing space.

Here, police have devised creative ways to fit more and more people into a building that was constructed to accommodate no more than 150 officers but now houses 243 and 28 civilian employees.

The claustrophobic need not apply.

“When I came out of the academy in 1967, this was a one-man office,” said Detective Mike Wynn, standing in a cramped room. “Now we have four, plus all the file cabinets and computers.”

But all that is about to change.

Using funds provided by a bond measure approved by 69% of the voters in 1989, the Los Angeles Police Department is set to begin a $4.9-million expansion project that calls for the complete remodeling of the current Foothill station and construction of a two-story addition and a parking structure.

Work is scheduled to begin next week and will likely take 18 months to two years to complete.

The expansion is designed “not only to accommodate what we need now, but to satisfy our needs into the year 2000,” said Sgt. Bill Dolan of the Police Facilities Group.

At a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams said the expansion will enable Foothill officers to better serve the community and represents the many changes the department and the division--which had been in the spotlight in the aftermath of the Rodney G. King beating--are undergoing.

“Foothill, for all the wrong reasons, has been splashed all across the headlines, not just in Los Angeles but in America,” Williams said. He called the start of work on the expansion symbolic of “the new groundbreaking that is already taking place in terms of community-based policing.”

Williams noted that community-based policing in Los Angeles had its start in the Foothill Division and praised its officers for their success in implementing the new approach. Councilmen Hal Bernson and Ernani Bernardi, whose districts are patrolled by the Foothill Division, used the occasion to again call for more police officers in the Valley.

“It’s long past due,” Bernson said of the expansion. “Better late than never. Hopefully we can get some more police officers so we can make these streets safe again.”

For the officers who work at Foothill, word of the expansion was welcome news.

“We’re so cramped,” said Sgt. Sandy Jo MacArthur. “There’s no room for file cabinets, there’s no storage space. People who transfer from other divisions can’t believe it.”

Since the current station was built in the early 1960s, the surrounding community has grown to 300,000 people in 60 square miles.

Rooms once used to interview suspects have been converted to offices.

One addition will be a women’s locker room. There were few women officers in the ‘60s, so the station was built without one. Women officers now use a trailer outside the building.

The new building will have a detective squad room. Space is so tight now that officers are often forced to hold training sessions and planning meetings in halls and conference rooms in the community, Capt. Gabe Ornelas said.

But with the advent of community policing, such conditions provide an even greater hardship on the division, which is now attempting to reach out to the community.

“Part of that philosophy is that the doors of the station are open to the community,” Ornelas said. “That means we need a place for them to come and meet with police,” he said. The new station will provide “a place where people can talk and discuss issues.”

In addition to the remodeling and the two-story addition, the expansion will include the construction of a 241-car parking structure. The current parking lot holds only 115 vehicles, forcing many who work at or visit the station to park on nearby streets.

Peter Whittingham, who transferred from the Wilshire Division, where, he said, the working environment was “simply superb,” said the expansion will likely help to improve morale.

“It’s always good when you have a work environment that lends itself to good work,” Whittingham said.

Some in the community also see the project as an indication that things are changing.

“We’ve got a new building and a new attitude at Foothill,” said Fred Taylor, who heads Focus 90, a Pacoima community group. “Community-based policing is really working here.”