$14 Million Lease Rankles Supervisors Kevin Jeffries, Jeff Stone

Despite concerns about costs and redundancies, the board of supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of centralizing Riverside County data storage and processing operations at an office complex vacated by a corporation.

The board authorized the Department of Information Technology to sign a 10-year, $14 million lease on a 23,477-square-foot building at 1960 Chicago Ave., within the Riverside Technology Business Park.

Acorn Technology Corp., a data collection, broadband Internet and website hosting firm, recently pulled out of the location, leaving behind fixtures, server racks, backup electrical generators and other appurtenances that county Economic Development Agency Director Rob Field said would more than satisfactorily facilitate the county's information technology needs.

Both Field and Department of Information Technology Director Kevin Crawford were questioned at length about justification for the move given that only six months earlier the county purchased the former Press-Enterprise newspaper building on 14th Street in downtown Riverside for $30 million with the purpose of converting that five-story, 150,000-square-foot structure into an information technology hub.

According to Field and Crawford, the Chicago Avenue building is already equipped with "Tier 3" networking hardware, telecommunications conduits and other systems ready made for consolidation of the county's information technology operations.

The Press-Enterprise building -- soon to be re-christened the Riverside County Innovation Center -- lacks many of the same attributes, requiring construction of a platform within the building to meet the county's standards, Field said.

"I've reached a level of fatigue on this issue," Supervisor Kevin Jeffries said. "It's getting tougher and tougher to support these big ticket items without a plan going forward.

"I mean, should we put the P-E building back up for sale if we're not going to use it for one of the intended purposes? This seems to undermine one of the premises on which we based the purchase of the P-E building."

Jeffries represents the cities of Lake Elsinore and Wildomar, among other local jurisdictions.

Field replied that the county's business plan was "evolving over time" and reaffirmed that the lease option on the Chicago Avenue structure was a "good deal" at 63 cents per square foot, especially with all that comes with it.

Supervisor Jeff Stone subscribed to Jeffries' opinion, arguing that it was difficult to justify putting the county back into a lease when one of the rationales for taking possession of the P-E building was to unify information technology personnel and equipment under one roof instead of having them scattered in several different leased offices throughout the city.

One of the supervisor's constituents, Paul Jacobs, went a step farther, characterizing the P-E purchase as a "bureaucratic boondoggle" and questioning why there was a rush to put the county into long-term bond debt to acquire the newspaper headquarters when negotiations could have continued toward buying the Acorn Technology Corp. complex.

Stone represents the cities of Murrieta and Temecula, among other local jurisdictions.

Field said the property owner has not been receptive to a possible sale, even though the county has made "multiple" inquiries.

Board Chairman John Benoit argued the county was coming out ahead by moving into the Acorn Technology complex, noting that the projected cost to construct a high-end data center in the P-E building was $10 million.

"Having a level 3 data center is better than building one at your own expense," Benoit said. "This is a healthy move for our data protection."

Benoit predicted the P-E building would be "filled up" even without the data management component.

Stone and Jeffries appeared swayed to support entering into a lease of the Acorn property after Field assured them that efforts to negotiate for an outright purchase would continue. --City New Service