Juvenile Hall's 'Calming' Expansion

$95 Million Project Aims at Relieving Overcrowding at Sacramento Facility

By David Silva

For Lionakis Beaumont Design Group Inc., the job of designing the Juvenile Hall expansion project in Sacramento was more than just another contract.

"Operationally, you have to design the facility for the people who will run it," said Maynard Feist, project director for LBDG. "But we also wanted to provide the kids who'd be housed there with a more humanizing environment."

Construction of the $95 million project, aimed at relieving chronic overcrowding at the existing 261-bed facility, began in April 2005 and should be completed by mid-October. Broward Bros. Construction of Woodland is the general contractor, and Lionakis - located in Sacramento - is the architect of record.

The juvenile hall, a division of the Sacramento County Probation Department, is located at 9600 Kiefer Blvd.

Feist cited four key concerns that shaped the design of the 38,000-sq.- ft. project. The first was durability: The materials used had to be able to hold up to the kind of abuse that 356 juveniles (the population of the facility as of February) could dish out. And they had to hold up a long time.

"We primarily used concrete masonry for all the wall construction, as well as steel and concrete for the roof and lots of cast-in-place concrete," Feist said.
The second concern was decentralization of services. In order to limit movement of the inmates, who Feist referred to as "the kids," the project had to be designed so that all the services they needed would be brought to them.

Along with the addition of 90 beds, the expansion project includes additional classroom and dayroom facilities, medical and mental health support areas, food service areas, laundry services, staff dining and training areas, a new visitors center, new security electronics and a new central plant.

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The other two overarching concerns, aesthetics and acoustics, were largely related to keeping the juveniles relaxed and, by extension, safer.

"The aesthetics of the design really go to the interior of the facility," Feist said. "We wanted to bring in a lot of natural light and provide more neutral colors. Obviously, you don't want to put any bright or gang-related colors, so we stayed away from the reds and the blues.

"We wanted to make the aesthetics a little more timely, avoiding the 'flavor-of-the-month' colors. So we introduced several golds and more native colors to the surroundings - a series of brown tans, neutrals and off-whites.

"The other thing is that when you do a juvenile hall facility, you want to really pay attention to the acoustics. It's a calming issue - the louder the noise, the more agitated the kids will get."

The county chose Broward Bros. Construction for its experience in large-scale institutional projects. Prior to the Sacramento contract, Broward built the juvenile hall facility in Yolo County - a project Lionakis also designed.

Broward project manager Vic Fechter said that tackling the expansion project was a lot like tackling any other public institution, but there were a few differences. All Broward's onsite employees had to have security clearances, meaning that their names had to be submitted in advance to the county probation department for background checks. Serious attention also had to be paid to keeping the juveniles separated from the workers.

"The job requires a great deal of coordination with the probation department in terms of working inside a secure facility," Fechter said. "Temporary fences and a temporary secure wall had to be installed to isolate us from the population."