New Building Blooms in City Heights

Colorful Career Center Called a Neighborhood Beacon

The $20 million structure, designed by Studio E Architects and erected by Sundt Construction, was painted with rich colors to blend with other structures in the multicultural section of east San Diego. The offices are occupied by the San Diego Workforce Partnership, a non-profit organization that helps connect people with jobs and training.

By Greg Aragon

As colorful as a spring flower, the new $20 million Metro Career Center opened April 17 in the east San Diego community of City Heights.

	PHOTO BY GREG ARAGON

Decked in rich reds and eye-opening yellows and accented by off-white and violet, the façade of the four-story building, constructed by the San Diego office of Sundt Construction, was designed to stand out.

"We tried to create something that would act as a beacon in the neighborhood, something that you could see from the freeway and know that you've arrived at City Heights," said project designer Eric Naslund, a principal with San Diego-based Studio E Architects. "We were trying to be very optimistic and cheerful with the colors."

Naslund said one of the main inspirations for the building's unique color scheme came from existing structures in the area.

"Most of [the buildings here] have very effusive use of color, and if you look at some of the storefronts and buildings that run through the community, they tend to be very vibrant in their use of rich and saturated colors, such as reds and yellows," he added. "So it was an attempt to really pick up on and work with colors they use."

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A real melting pot
Developed by the San Diego Revitalization Corp., the Career Center is located in a low-income area where about 26,000 people speak nearly 20 different languages. It sits along a major transit hub, at the junction of Interstate 15 and University Avenue, and is occupied by the San Diego Workforce Partnership, a non-profit organization that helps connect people with jobs and training throughout Mid-City, Mission Valley, downtown and other job centers in the San Diego region.

"The Metro Career Center provides a state-of-the-art resource for the community to help get the valuable job training necessary to find meaningful and desirable employment in San Diego," Mayor Dick Murphy said in a prepared statement.

The 88,000-sq.-ft. facility features offices, retail space, a community meeting room, classrooms, day-care facilities and an adjacent five-story, 164,000-sq.-ft. parking structure (designed by the Irvine office of International Parking Design).

	The Sundt Construction project team for the $20 million Metro Career Center in San Diego included, from left, Willis Locke (project director), De Anna Andrews, (project engineer), Ken Iacuaniello (project manager) and Elizabeth Deilke (project administrator). Photo by Greg Aragon.

Directly behind the center, a $25.5 million, 120-unit, low-income housing complex known as Metro Villas is preparing to open next month. Designed by Studio E and being built by San Diego-based Sun Country Builders, the apartments will share the 493-space parking garage with the Metro Center.

Sundt project manager Ken Iacuaniello said that it was a formidable task to build the Metro Center and the parking garage while another general contractor was erecting a large housing complex only 3-ft. away.

"Usually in construction, you like to have a lot of room," said Iacuaniello, whose company also installed 3,000 ft. of sewer for the project. "We had none. We had a freeway on one side, [a new residential building behind us] and public streets all the way around us, so we were stuck in a little block."

Iacuaniello said the cramped quarters made staging materials and coordinating deliveries on the 4-acre site difficult.

"All work was carefully coordinated between Sundt and the residential contractor on a day-by-day basis to avoid or minimize schedule impact to either project," he added.