The Long Beach Civic Center was recently honored with a Bronze Award in the recently completed 2020 Building Team Awards. The project has several sections like a public library, a new headquarters for the Port of Long Beach, and a new City Hall and civic chambers.
The new building replaced an old one that was poorly maintained and was seismically unsafe. The project is expected to revitalize and make Long Beach downtown more vibrant. The building is divided into four structures that span six city blocks.
Long Beach Civic Center has several firsts
The new block had several first at its launch the first municipal project in North America that was design-build-finance-operate-maintain (DBFOM) and the largest municipal public-private partnership in the U.S. Long Beach Civic Center was also the first to combine both private and infrastructure development in one project.
The building was designed with performance-based criteria that exceed the California Building Code. The Long Beach Civic Center can be used within seven days of a serious seismic event and be fully operational within a month.
In designing the building, the client and the building team wanted to achieve several objectives. They envisioned a building that portrays civic gravitas as well as offers the best value for taxpayers. The building was meant to add more life to the downtown community.
The grid between the Long Beach Civic Center and the downtown area is made up of a regional bike network, buses, and Metro Blue Line. The building’s design embraced nine guiding principles in Long Beach’s Downtown Plan and was reached after more than 100 information sessions, community meetings, and design charrettes.
The building is fabricated with more than 330,000 sf of unitized curtain wall and has 3,362 panels were assembled on-site in only six months. The city saved around $1 million thanks to the team’s innovative approach.
