July 1, 2005

Movin’ on up to new San Jose City Hall

$345.6 million, three-building complex ready for occupancy

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

Forget the parking and traffic nightmare surrounding the new San Jose City Hall complex at 200 East Santa Clara Street.

Architects placed the project’s largest component in a slender and elegantly proportioned 18-story tower.

Once you enter the three-building project through Fourth Street, it’s easy to appreciate its beauty, which now adorns a typically dull skyline and helps the city consolidate several services currently spread haphazardly across town.

Slugged by critics as “The Taj Gonzal,” in reference to San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales’ push to build the ambitious municipal project for the past three years, it ruthlessly competes with the dramatic but now dwarfed Martin Luther King Jr. Library and the nearby San Jose State University campus.

Perfect location
Like the city halls in San Francisco, Denver and Boston, the new complex should be considered a striking landmark with only one difference according to its architects and builders—the perfect location.

Michael Palladino, the project’s leading design architect with the reputable New York-based Richard Meier & Partners architectural firm, said Fifth Street, San Jose’s original main street, runs through the middle of the site.

Before starting the 530,000-square-feet, $345.6 million complex’s blueprint, architects researched the city’s history, weather and urban design. They set site-specific goals that included maximizing the area’s climate to build a sustainable project, taking advantage of natural breezes and sunlight to ventilate and illuminate the building and conserve energy.

Palladino said another project goal was to mitigate downtown high-rise and low-rise neighborhoods south and east of the facility, which they attempted by building the tower, the council chambers and the domed rotunda at different height levels.

“We wanted to create a civic place where people can gather, celebrate and hang out,” said Palladino. “To do that, the architecture had to be approachable, user-friendly and convenient, and in the end we’ve achieved all those goals.”

With a capacity to house 1,950 employees, approximately 1,600 city workers will be transferring to their new digs this summer. San Jose’s Information Technology, Transportation and Public Works departments already moved in June. The remaining city departments will join them in phases throughout July and August.

Workers study several of the more than 1,000 pieces of glass that make up the rotunda dome of the new San Jose City Hall complex.

Over and under budget
The project’s construction budget ran over by $2.6 million, but the technology, furniture and equipment budget, estimated at $45.25 million, is under budget by “more than enough to compensate for the construction budget overrun,” said Tom Manheim, the city’s public outreach officer.

Former San Jose Mayor Al Ruffo sued the city in 1998 to try to prevent the complex’s construction. He was concerned about possible violations of Measure I, a 1996 ballot initiative that uses a complicated formula to cap public project costs.

A judge ruled in favor of the city’s effort. City officials estimate the new complex will save $189 million in the next 50 years since San Jose won’t have to continue leasing office space to accommodate its departments in private buildings.
City officials said the complex would improve the quality of municipal services by bringing departments from eight locations throughout the city into one main building and a one-stop service center.

“In about 21 months we have come from a hole in the ground to where you see it now,” Manheim said.

Main tower
To reduce the complex’s visible scale, architects placed the project’s largest component in a slender and elegantly proportioned 18-story tower that rises to 285 feet at its highest point. It is 68 feet wide and 255 feet long.

The tower is much narrower than a typical office building. It takes advantage of natural light radiating in from its sides with 11-and-a-half foot ceilings at one end, stepping down to 9.6-foot ceilings at the other end to allow for a row of offices along the east side. The tower’s windows have low, long and narrow ventilators that open with a handle and allow users to cool off the building from both ends.

Making the tower thin and tall required special engineering that relied on two massive concrete walls at the end of the building for lateral bracing. The two walls act as bookends and resist the building’s movement, Palladino explained, noting that the tower is also equipped with a ‘redundant’ seismic prevention system.

Users will see through the building when they exit the tower’s elevators, which are on the outside. The edifice also takes full advantage of natural lighting as its windows are not tinted and are protected by a sophisticated shading device, or brise soleil, designed as a leveler blind. The shield covers the tower’s west side to prevent the sun from heating its glass windows, which have regular blinds on the inside for further protection.

Meeting spaces
The tower also has more than 100 meeting spaces, with up to half of them available for community use. Robert T. Steinberg, president of the San Jose-based architectural firm of Steinberg Architects, the project’s associate architects, said the rooms with the city’s most breathtaking views were granted to the community.

An equal amount of effort was put into making the complex functional for city workers. It’s zoned so that offices can be closed in the evenings and on weekends, while many remain open during off hours for public use, added Steinberg.

“It’s not just a building for city workers, but for the city as a whole. It’s going to be a tremendous addition to our downtown,” said Steinberg.

Located on the tower’s lower floors will be the city’s Customer Service Center. This will bring many city operations together at the same public counter and allow customers easy access to frequently used services, including planning, building and other permits.

A customer information desk, self-service stations to review building permits and other building documents, waiting areas and a centralized cashier will also be included on the tower’s first level where customers can pay their municipal bills as well as their developmental fees. Above the first floor, an indoor path leads visitors from the tower to the council chambers and meeting rooms in the west wing.

Palladino said architects wanted the tower’s first four floors to be convenient for the public, on the ground level, directly off the public plaza and accessible from the tower’s underground 372-car parking facility. A total of 300 of these spaces are dedicated for public use.

The city is building a separate parking structure to accommodate 1,128 employees. The new parking facility, which will be completed in May 2006, will be located between North Fourth and North Fifth Streets, north of Santa Clara Street. The cost of this parking facility is included in the total price tag of the complex.

Rotunda dome
How do you hold 1,032 pieces of glass together to make a rotunda dome that stretches 110 feet high in the air? Through collaboration between city officials and manufacturers of a glazing system that allowed the dome to be developed in a traditional yet contemporary way, Palladino said.

The glass dome building was erected without mullions or visible means of support. It is sustained by cables and stainless steel compression members with the glass being carried from above rather than supported from below.

“It makes a statement that this is a public building, a civic place. In San Jose just making a dome similar to San Francisco wouldn’t suggest where San Jose is, which is at the leading edge of developing technology. The dome is cutting-edge technology,” Palladino said.

Officials are calling the rotunda San Jose’s “living room” where the community can celebrate weddings and other social events.

The rotunda’s construction schedule is running slightly behind, but it’s expected to be completed by the first of October. The new city hall’s grand opening and community celebration will take place after the rotunda is finished.

City council chambers
The 7,000-square-foot council chambers will use state-of-the-art audio/video technology and will be fully accessible to people with disabilities. Also included next to the chambers are committee meeting rooms, which may be scheduled for community use and can be configured to accommodate various group sizes.

The chambers are bright and indirectly lit by outside lighting through a skylight on the south side. They are also built in the form of an orchestra-like pit with the council seating below the audience. Those wishing to speak to the council will see eye to eye with their elected officials, as opposed to looking up to the officials as they do in the current council chambers.

The seating rows are steep enough to allow good view of proceedings from anywhere in the room, which was also designed to enhance its acoustic quality through the use of a special wood structures and perforated metal sheets on its walls. Proceedings will be projected on overhead screens above the council seating area. The room’s capacity is 330 seats compared to the old chamber’s capacity of 350 seats.

“We wanted to build a council chamber that was absolutely unlike the council chambers of any city,” Palladino said. “We’ll be able to use it for lots of things in addition to council meetings.”

The project has three components with topographic fields of granite, boulders and telescoping aluminum veins that are 20-to-28-feet tall.

Public plaza
The project’s heart is its public plaza. It connects directly to the city council chambers, and also leads to the facility’s meeting rooms, lobby, information center and art gallery.

Mary Rubin, project manager for art in public places for San Jose’s Office of Cultural Affairs, described the plaza’s art project, titled “Water Escape.” A professional panel selected the art piece in 2000.

Rubin explained the project has three components with topographic fields of granite, boulders and telescoping aluminum veins that are 20-to-28-feet tall.

The topographic fields of granite rise in elevation at the plaza with water flowing from Santa Clara Street to the plaza, disappearing underneath and recirculating with a gentle lapping. At the edges the water is flowing down and rippling, which creates an interesting effect. Throughout the field, boulders with hidden nozzles will make the water bubble up, resembling rocks in a river.

The telescoping aluminum veins that will be positioned within the fields and out through the plaza delivering a cool misty breeze into the rotunda when its glass doors open are not yet ready. During hot days, the vapor will also mitigate the plaza’s heat and catch and reflect light to create interesting rainbows.

There will be no city council meetings in July. The first council meeting in the new downtown city hall complex will be held Tuesday, Aug. 9, at 200 E. Santa Clara St., San Jose, Calif., 95113, between North Fourth and North Sixth streets. Public tours will be available starting this fall.

For more information, go to the Web: www.sanjoseca.gov/newcityhall.

Move-in schedule for new City Hall

City staff will move into the new downtown City Hall at 200 East Santa Clara St. in phases. Here are the move-in dates by department, their location, floor number and new phone numbers. If you have any questions on how to reach a specific program, department or staff person, call the Customer Service Call Center at (408) 535-3500.

The old San Jose City Hall at North First Street opened in 1958 when the city’s population was 143,000 and its land area was 45 square miles. San Jose’s population today is 945,000, almost seven times the number 47 years ago, and the city now encompasses 178 square miles, four times larger.