flexiblefullpage
billboard
interstitial1
catfish1
Currently Reading

Los Angeles's Hall of Justice gets a reprieve

Justice Facilities

Los Angeles's Hall of Justice gets a reprieve

After being unoccupied for 20 years, the downtown Los Angeles judicial center was revitalized through a restoration effort that proved to be a considerable engineering and construction feat.


By John Caulfield, Senior Editor   | November 13, 2015
Los Angeles's Hall of Justice gets a reprieve

Micro-abrasive glass-bead blasting helped restore the ivory color to exterior granite. Photo: Victor Muschetto Photography.

The Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles, which opened in 1925, had a long and notorious history. Its courtrooms and jails hosted the likes of Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, and Bugsy Siegel. The County Medical Examiner performed the autopsies on Marilyn Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy there.

GOLD AWARD

LOS ANGELES COUNTY HALL OF JUSTICE
Los Angeles, Calif.

Building Team
Submitting firm: Clark Construction Group 
(design-builder)
Owner: Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Works
Architect: AC Martin Partners
Historic architect: Levin & Associates
Mechanical Engineer: Simon Wong Associates
Electrical/plumbing engineer: Syska Hennessy Group
Conservator: Williams Conservation Arts
Envelope consultant: Wiss, Janney, Eltsner & Associates

General Information
Size: 335,000 sf
Construction cost: $175,054,100
Construction time: August 2011 to August 2014
Delivery method: Design-build

The 14-story Beaux Arts building stood out in L.A.’s skyline. But the Northridge earthquake, which rumbled through the city in 1994, rendered the Hall of Justice structurally unsound. For nearly 20 years, it sat unoccupied. Thanks to a fundraising drive spearheaded by former L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca, the building was revitalized through a restoration effort that, in the process of preserving its design elements and modernizing its facilities, proved to be a considerable engineering and construction feat.

The structural and seismic retrofit alone required the installation of concrete shear walls and drag beams on every elevation of every floor. Over 10 miles of #11 rebar were hand-installed. Two light courts were structurally reinforced from the interior with a system of strongbacks tied to the masonry with about 60,000 helical anchors. The building’s 11th and 13th floors were removed to allow for double-height spaces, which also enhanced the flow of natural light into a previously low-ceiling, dark former jail area.

Four ground-floor columns had to be taken out so a new media room would have unobstructed views. But the only way to get 40-foot-long support beams into the building was to hoist them by crane through second-story windows. The beams, which weighed more than 80,000 pounds, rested temporarily on the second floor with only a few load-bearing columns to prevent them from falling into the basement. The Building Team enlarged the existing spread footings and reinforced the existing columns from the basement to the second floor to support this load.

Seven months into construction the Building Team discovered that steel-frame members encapsulated in concrete fireproofing were coated with lead-based paint. To keep the project on track, the schedule was resequenced so that finishes proceeded from the top of the building once structural work was completed. This way, the team could concurrently execute the lead abatement and remove contaminants going down through the structure.

 

Removing the 11th and 13th floors allowed natural light to seep into previously low-ceiling jail cell areas. Photo: Victor Muschetto Photography.

 

ATTENTION TO EVERY DETAIL

With this restoration, L.A. County’s Hall of Justice was welcome into the 21st century. Completely new MEP systems and lighting controls were installed. The Building Team tied a new elevator network with a destination dispatch interface into the building’s security system, which enable them to eliminate one of the seven elevators.

BIM was critical to meeting the schedule. Using as-built drawings from 1925 as the starting point, design-builder Clark Construction Group generated a model of the structure and supplemented that with field survey details. The as-built model included detailed modeling of the large existing trusses in the ceiling of the 12th floor, which held up the building’s roof where the main mechanical rooms were located.

The Building Team went to great lengths to maintain or restore the Hall of Justice’s original components.

Each of the building’s 1,600 windows was disassembled so that lead paint could be removed. Every single glazing stop screw in the windows was re-created to match the original. The hall’s four historic staircases, which weren’t code compliant, required variance approval to allow the features to remain true to their original character.

A resident conservator performed small-scale mockups, which the historic architect and envelope consultants used to produce a biddable set of specifications. This was particularly useful in maintaining quality control on the exterior cladding restoration.

The project team had access to working electronic files that included a historical database which hyperlinked catalogued photos of the building’s details to the construction plans for reference as questions arose. This helped the team’s efforts to reinstall historic materials as close to their original location as possible.

The project, designed to achieve LEED Silver certification, moved up to LEED Gold. The majority of its envelope was restored. More than 25,000 sf of interior stone was reused or reconfigured. Ninety-five percent of its 12,000 tons of construction waste was diverted from landfill.

Over the decades, the building’s ivory-colored granite had turned a dull gray. To restore the original color, the Building Team employed a micro-abrasive glass-bead blasting system. Clark also saved the owner $1 million when it determined that the building’s existing anchorage, which held the granite to the exterior, satisfied modern seismic requirements and need not be replaced.

This was the largest project that the county’s Department of Public Works had delivered.

The building, which houses the offices of the L.A. County Sheriff and District Attorney, reopened last October. 

 

3D modeling employed as-built drawings from 1925 as a starting point to restore the grandeur of the building’s interior. The Building Team also used small-scale mock ups of each piece of the building’s historic fabric. Photo: Victor Muschetto Photography.

Related Stories

| Aug 11, 2010

Portland Cement Association offers blast resistant design guide for reinforced concrete structures

Developed for designers and engineers, "Blast Resistant Design Guide for Reinforced Concrete Structures" provides a practical treatment of the design of cast-in-place reinforced concrete structures to resist the effects of blast loads.  It explains the principles of blast-resistant design, and how to determine the kind and degree of resistance a structure needs as well as how to specify the required materials and details.

| Aug 11, 2010

NASA plans federal government's greenest building

NASA is set to break ground on what the agency expects will become the highest performing building in the federal government. Named Sustainability Base, the new building at Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., will be a showplace for sustainable technologies, featuring "NASA Inside" through the incorporation of some of the agency’s most advanced recycling and intelligent controls technologies originally developed to support NASA’s human and robotic space exploration missions.

| Aug 11, 2010

Jacobs, CH2M Hill, AECOM top BD+C's ranking of the 75 largest federal government design firms

A ranking of the Top 75 Federal Government Design Firms based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants

| Aug 11, 2010

Manhattan's Pier 57 to be transformed into cultural center, small business incubator, and public park as part of $210 million redevelopment plan

LOT-EK, Beyer Blinder Belle, and West 8 have been selected as the design team for Hudson River Park’s Pier 57 at 15th Street and the Hudson River as part of the development group led by New York-based real estate developer YoungWoo & Associates. The 375,000 square foot vacant, former passenger ship terminal will be transformed into a cultural center, small business incubator, and public park, including a rooftop venue for the Tribeca Film Festival.

| Aug 11, 2010

Gensler, HOK, HDR among the nation's leading reconstruction design firms, according to BD+C's Giants 300 report

A ranking of the Top 100 Reconstruction Design Firms based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants

| Aug 11, 2010

ASHRAE introduces building energy label prototype

Most of us know the fuel efficiency of our cars, but what about our buildings? ASHRAE is working to change that, moving one step closer today to introducing its building energy labeling program with release of a prototype label at its 2009 Annual Conference in Louisville, Ky.

| Aug 11, 2010

10 tips for mitigating influenza in buildings

Adopting simple, common-sense measures and proper maintenance protocols can help mitigate the spread of influenza in buildings. In addition, there are system upgrades that can be performed to further mitigate risks. Trane Commercial Systems offers 10 tips to consider during the cold and flu season.

| Aug 11, 2010

Jacobs, HOK top BD+C's ranking of the 75 largest state/local government design firms

A ranking of the Top 75 State/Local Government Design Firms based on Building Design+Construction's 2009 Giants 300 survey. For more Giants 300 rankings, visit http://www.BDCnetwork.com/Giants

| Aug 11, 2010

NAVFAC releases guidelines for sustainable reconstruction of Navy facilities

The guidelines provide specific guidance for installation commanders, assessment teams, estimators, programmers and building designers for identifying the sustainable opportunities, synergies, strategies, features and benefits for improving installations following a disaster instead of simply repairing or replacing them as they were prior to the disaster.

boombox1
boombox2
native1

More In Category

Giants 400

Top 50 Justice Facility Construction Firms for 2023

Turner Construction, Whiting-Turner, STO Building Group, Clark Group, and CORE Construction top BD+C's ranking of the nation's largest justice facility general contractors and construction management (CM) firms for 2023, as reported in the 2023 Giants 400 Report. Note: This ranking includes revenue from all public safety/justice facilities buildings work, including correctional facilities, fire stations, jails, police stations, and prisons.  


Giants 400

Top 60 Justice Facility Engineering Firms for 2023

EXP, AECOM, IMEG, Dewberry, and Tetra Tech head BD+C's ranking of the nation's largest justice facility engineering and engineering architecture (EA) firms for 2023, as reported in the 2023 Giants 400 Report. Note: This ranking includes revenue from all public safety/justice facilities buildings work, including correctional facilities, fire stations, jails, police stations, and prisons.  


Giants 400

Top 90 Justice Facility Architecture Firms for 2023

DLR Group, Stantec, HDR, HOK, and Elevatus Architecture top BD+C's ranking of the nation's largest justice facility architecture and architecture engineering (AE) firms for 2023, as reported in the 2023 Giants 400 Report. Note: This ranking includes revenue from all public safety/justice facilities buildings work, including correctional facilities, fire stations, jails, police stations, and prisons. 


Giants 400

Top 115 Architecture Engineering Firms for 2023

Stantec, HDR, Page, HOK, and Arcadis North America top the rankings of the nation's largest architecture engineering (AE) firms for nonresidential building and multifamily housing work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2023 Giants 400 Report.

halfpage1

Most Popular Content

  1. 2021 Giants 400 Report
  2. Top 150 Architecture Firms for 2019
  3. 13 projects that represent the future of affordable housing
  4. Sagrada Familia completion date pushed back due to coronavirus
  5. Top 160 Architecture Firms 2021