Sacramento City Hall Renovation, Expansion Enters Final 90 Days

Refurbished 95-Year-Old Building Will Have 5-Story Addition

The restoration cost about $11 million of the total $60 million price tag. The new 267,000-sq.-ft. administration building includes an underground parking garage for 170 cars and a precast concrete-pile foundation and steel frame. Exterior materials include precast concrete, stone, brick and metal panels.

By Robert Carlsen

A plaza separates the new five-story, 267,000-sq.-ft. administration building, right, from the three-story, 39,000-sq.-ft. city hall structure (photo courtesy of the city of Sacramento).

The City of Sacramento's desire to centralize all its employees scattered throughout downtown into one general location precipitated the construction of a new government complex.

And since an earlier proposal to seismically upgrade the 95-year-old City Hall was going through the budget approval process, officials decided to place all government near the historic landmark.

The plan was, in government-speak, to "create an enduring civic center that enhances the historic City Hall." Having one location, between 9th and 10th and H and I streets, would also alleviate the need for leased office space and "be more convenient for customers of the city," according to the city's Web site.

Sacramento-based David S. Taylor Interests is the development manager on the dual project of restoring City Hall and constructing the new administration building.

Fentress Bradburn of Denver is the exterior design architect for the new administration building and San Francisco-based Chong Partners Architecture worked with Architectural Resources Group of San Francisco on the City Hall building restoration and also did the interior design on the new building.

Demolishing an adjacent firehouse and an outdated annex building, which was built in 1939, took place in February 2003. There was also an underground tunnel connecting City Hall and the annex that needed to be sealed off.

The demolition of the annex also opened up the north side of the historic City Hall for the first time in more than 60 years.

The new annex-or administration building- measures 267,000 sq. ft. It is five stories, including an underground garage for 170 cars, and features a precast concrete pile foundation and steel frame. Exterior materials include precast concrete, stone, brick, curtainwall and metal panels.

A new plaza area will connect the administration building to City Hall.

The City Hall restoration, which will cost about $11 million of the total $60 million dual-project price tag, was a complete inside-and-out job, according to E.C. Looi, project manager for the city's Public Works department. With the building's historic significance in mind, Looi said he hired the renowned historic preservation consulting firm, ARG.

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One of the major challenges of City Hall part of the job entailed seismic upgrades on the 39,000-sq.-ft., three-story structure, including driving 32 micropiles 60 to 70 ft. down through the foundation (with 12-ft. overhead clearance at some locations), and the replacement of some brick and terracotta on the exterior skin.

The interior restoration also included removing all the original stone floors and walls and cataloging placement. Masonry craftsmen also installed new marble wainscoting. The goal, according to ARG's David Wessel, was to keep the interior as original as possible.

Jeff Warner of Chong Partners said the whole concept of the restoration master plan was to return the building to its original state. "It's a beautiful wedding cake of a building," he said. "Through the years, there have been a lot of additions and it really didn't improve its appearance. So we took it back to its original look as well as giving it another 100 years of life."

Looi said the only change to the original design plan was relocating the main council chamber from the old building to the new administration building and remodeling the old chamber into a hearing room.

Bryan Amarel, project manager for the general contractor, Hensel Phelps Construction Co., said a problem popped up in April 2003 when prehistoric American Indian artifacts were discovered during excavation for the parking garage. The city's onsite archaeologist immediately stopped excavation until the investigation was completed in accordance with the State of California Environmental Quality Act.

The construction schedule was delayed 10 weeks.

"This was my first historic restoration project and, obviously, the delay brought some challenges," Amarel said. "You've got coroners, archeologists and city people all around, and here are the construction workers just watching."

Amarel said that with any project such as this, where workers don't know what's behind the walls-or under the ground, "you try to keep up the momentum. It's tough. With a 100-year-old building, you can never be sure what's behind the walls. You can speculate, but you really don't know. So you proceed slow, but steady."

Amarel said workers also discovered the historic clock tower of City Hall to be slightly (about 1 ft.) askew. "We called it the Leaning Tower of Sacramento," he added. He said the original builders caught the mistake and overbuilt the western side of the tower to compensate for the difference in elevation.

Hensel Phelps replaced the roof with a new "energy-saving single-ply roof.

Amarel also said contractors righted a sizeable wrong: The original City Hall had a men's restroom that took up about half of the first floor, while the ladies' restroom was a single stall. "We evened things out there," he said.

Amarel said he's now working toward the April 29 completion date.

"We're identifying any loose ends, trying to keep the punch list to a minimum," he added. "It's part of our quality-control program."