The city is considering almost doubling its current police headquarters at 609 W. Washington St., Suite 16, and signing a five-year lease because construction of a new police station could be as many as five years away.

"This isn’t going to be a Taj Mahal. We’ve gone from a $6 million project to a $4 million project to expanding into a chicken restaurant," Interim City Manager Bob Spinks told the city council at its Monday meeting.

"I’m trying to be realistic. I don’t see a new police station happening before five years," he said.

The plan also would allow the city to take "big steps forward" toward a new city hall, Spinks said.

The proposal was being presented to the council for the first time. A proposed lease and long-term plan for a new police station will be brought back later for council review.

Spinks said the long-term lease on the city’s police headquarters reverted to a month-to-month lease a few years ago. Then the police annex suite was leased on a month-to-month basis beginning in 2006 while the city pursued building a new police station, he said.

Then last month shopping center owner Dick McNish told the city he wanted to convert those leases to five years at market rate or arrange a temporary lease while the police department found a new location, Spinks said.

In a memo to the council, Spinks said McNish is willing to have the city remain in the shopping center location and even expand another 5,280 square feet into the recently closed Danny’s Restaurant and Village

Event Center.

In exchange for a five-year lease, the city would get below market rate rent for two years with increases in the three remaining years being tied to the Seattle area’s cost of living index, he said.

The city also would get an escape clause if it leased a new police station from McNish in the future, Spinks said.

The 1,000-square-foot detectives annex would cost $11,885 annually and the 10,560 square feet of existing police headquarters and the expansion would cost $81,156 plus $2,000 for a gated parking area, according to Spinks’ memo. The total rent for police department space in 2009 would be $95,041.

The city also expects to receive $12,000 annually in sublease payments from the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office using the Sequim Police Department’s space.