Part one of a series.
City staff will come to the council in February 2026 to discuss forming a working group or ad hoc committee to look at replacing Lifeguard Headquarters. Staff recommends replacing the building.
Lifeguard headquarters was near the top of the agenda for the 2025 City Council Strategic Planning Meeting. (Last year’s meeting was held Jan. 30, 2024.) The yearly meeting was held in fire station #48, near Leisure World, on Saturday, Nov. 8. Eight chairs were set aside for members of the public.
Seal Beach Police Chief Michael Henderson moderated the meeting rather than a consultant.
“This is my first time doing this. I’ve done a lot of things in my police career, but this is not one of them,” Henderson said.
Council members, department heads, and some support staff participated in the meeting.
Henderson said that he and City Manager Patrick Gallegos sat with all of the council members and identified the priorities that they wanted to focus on at the Strategic Planning meeting.
The meeting video is not quite four hours long. As of 11:07 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, the video had been viewed 56 times.
Discussion
According to Henderson, the staff and council discussions found that Seal Beach needed to start addressing infrastructure somewhere. Main Street was the focus.
Public Works Director Iris Lee said the city officials had been talking about the Lifeguard HQ for a few years already. (See “Lifeguard HQ: A look,” at sunnews.org.)
According to Lee, the building was originally constructed in the 1930s.
She said the city did an assessment of the building in 2010.
“We weren’t able to make a lot of progress primarily due to budgetary issues,” Lee said.
According to Lee, the city did another assessment in 2020. The conclusion: Seal Beach needs to rebuild or remodel substantially.
Lee said staff recommended taking it down and rebuild the headquarters to meet code and move forward.
She said 8,500 square feet would meet the needs of the police substation and Lifeguard headquarters.
She said the council made a decision a couple of years ago to move funds for the community swimming pool to the Lifeguard headquarters. There is $4.4 million in the bank. “This is not enough to build a whole new lifeguard headquarters or do a remodel for that means,” Lee said.
According to Lee, the cost of an 8,500 square foot rebuild would be about $11 million. Adjusting for potential costs in labor and material, staff gave a round number of $15 million for the purpose of conversation. (In 2020, the cost was put at $9.5 million. See “Seal Beach officials looking at renovation or reconstruction of Lifeguard Headquarters,” at sunnews.org.)
She said the focus of the meeting would be how the city would make up the balance of $10 million to actually make the project work.
She said the city would likely need some kind of external funding.
She said the city needed to be shovel ready.
“A lot of the grants out there nowadays ask for a lot of community engagement,” Lee said.
Lee said staff recommended starting the requests for proposals process to bring on a team to make the project shovel ready.
“When you say, ‘bring on a team,’ what does that mean,” asked District Four Councilwoman Patty Senecal.
Lee said a project managing team, to cover the permitting processes.
“But to start, we have some kind of concept plan,” Lee said.
According to Lee, this was a typical construction project. “What makes it a bit more specialized is [its] along the coastline,” Lee said.
She said Seal Beach would need a good environmental team as part of getting coastal development permits.
District Three Councilwoman/Mayor Lisa Landau asked what would be the cost of getting the project shovel ready.
“Depends on how far along we want to be for the project readiness,” Lee said.
“Why wouldn’t we be able to do part of that in house?” asked City Manager Patrick Gallegos.
“We certainly don’t have all the expertise of how to do all that work,” Lee said. She also said it was a full-time project by itself.
District Five Councilman Nathan Steele asked why there was so much space (on the top floor) for a police function.
“It’s very much a publicly visited building for information,” Henderson said.
Steele praised the police volunteers. “If we need VIP [Volunteers in Policing] there, why don’t they take up a smaller section?” Steele asked.
Marine Safety Chief Joe Bailey said his department wanted a better public facing area. He said the public doesn’t necessarily know how to find the Lifeguard Headquarters.
Bailey said he has been pushing for a public facing area where people can ask the Lifeguards questions.
Steele expressed reluctance to get money from Sacramento.
“For us to control the financing ourselves, we as a city have to have the cash flow to be able to support whatever debt we might take on for this project,” Steele said.
District One Council Member Joe Kalmick asked if the project included the garages or just the building. According to Lee, the garages support the lifeguard and police facilities.
Senecal said she disagreed with Steele about financing. “I think we need to find every pot of money we can, every grant,” Senecal said.
District Two Councilman Ben Wong asked if Seal Beach had grant writers or is it something that would be time consuming for multiple staff members.
Lee said Seal Beach has the support of a professional grant writer. She said the city could definitely widen the pool of grant writers the city uses for the Lifeguard Headquarters project.
She said the project would be funded with a combination of legislative advocacy and grant writing. She said staff recommended the city find an external funding source.
Mayor Landau asked if the city allocated grant for a grant writer at the 2024 strategic planning meeting.
Gallegos said that was in the revitalization plan.
Finance Director Barbara Arenado said a portion of the money had been used but funding was still there. Lee put the figure at a ballpark $75,000.
Lee said it was at the council’s discretion whether to use that money for citywide initiatives or for Lifeguard Headquarters.
Henderson asked: How did the council want to spend the $4.4 million Seal Beach has for the project and what is the path forward?
Senecal asked if the $4.4 million was invested.
According to staff, the money is invested at a return of about 3%.
Lee said the degree of project readiness would depend on how much money Seal Beach wants to put forward.
“I share a concern where we’ve already done two assessments and then we’ve stopped,” Senecal said.
“I’m curious what the Coastal Commission’s gonna say and want, right?” Senecal said.
She suggested talking to the Coastal Commission while the city is looking at the project.
Steele suggested starting with the garage area first rather than doing the project all at once.
Later, Steele said there needs to be an in-house planning team in place for the project.
Steele said if he were to measure Lifeguard Headquarters against McGaugh swimming pool, McGaugh pool would be secondary.
Lee suggested two goals: Look for funding and look for different project implementation strategies.
Councilman Wong said he thought they all agreed that they want the Lifeguard Headquarters done. Wong said he leaned toward doing the whole project. He wanted to hear from Chief Bailey.
“There’s four different sections that were built from the ’30s to the ’80s,” Bailey said
“Newport, Laguna, Huntington, they all had their lifeguard headquarters redone about 10 or 15 years ago,” Bailey said
He said there was a lifecycle to lifeguarding in California: About 15 years.
Bailey said they needed to look at the project as a whole.
“The whole of our Lifeguard Headquarters doesn’t work at this point,” Bailey said.
He said he didn’t know how you build the garages without planning the whole building.
Ask asked how much the city would get from advertising on billboards and did all money need to be applied to debt service, Lee said: “Probably not.” .
Council Member Kalmick asked about naming rights.
Landau asked about an expiration date on funding.
According to Lee, environmental permitting has a “shelf life”.
Chamber of Commerce Board Member Peter Magalhaes asked if there was a way to partner with a university to reduce the cost of the design and permitting process.
Henderson suggested continuing the discussion at greater depth at another time.
Steele said the project called for community and team involvement with people from the Chamber of Commerce in the conversation, so the city can define how to move forward.
Steele proposed creating a working group or an ad hoc committee. The proposal would come to the council in the next couple of months.
Henderson said by the end of February, staff would come to the council with how they would define a working group to address the challenges of the Lifeguard headquarters project.
Next week, part two: Main Street beautification.
