Santa Fe Springs, CA

Client: County Clerk Service Center

Cost & Scope: $5.6 million; 110,000 sq. ft.

Key Personnel:

John Labib S.E., John Labib & Associates – Structural Engineer

Peter Gevorkian Ph.D., Vector Delta Design Group – Electrical Engineer

George V. Hovaguimian, PE,  Airplus Engineering Consultants, LLC – Mechanical Engineer

Serge Davalokhanian, ME, Airplus Engineering Consultants, LLC – Plumbing Engineer

Gerard Sanchis, ANC/CSI – Specification Writer

Completion Date: October, 2008

The Registrar Recorder – County Clerk Service Center is a 110,000-square-foot office and warehouse facility that processes all of the voting material for Los Angeles County. For every election, Service Center organizes and sends out voting booths and ballots to Los Angeles’ 5000 voting precincts. On election night all of the voting material is retrieved and returned to be processed at the center. 

The new facility will be housed in a 110,000 sq ft tilt-up concrete warehouse that the County purchased. The build out includes 18,000 sq ft of office space for the Registrar Recorder staff, the storage capacity for over 3000 pallets containing voting material, the capacity for 5000 newly implemented digital vote recording units, and facilities to count and process all of the votes associated with an election.

Designed and built-out in approximately 11 months the 110,000-square-foot facility will be complete in time for the preparation of voting material for the election in November 2007. This fast track approach made the collaborative process between the client, architect and consultant team critical and intense. Through the process of value engineering the design for the facility has become very efficient and cost-effective.

Lehrer Architects was given a program layout by the chief administrative office of the Los Angeles County. 

Original layout included a 18000 sq. ft. mezzanine to be used for storage of digital ballot readers. As a result of value engineering the mezzanine space had to be removed from the design. 

In working with the storage consultant, Lehrer Architects came up with an inventive solution that eliminated the need for the mezzanine and still satisfied client’s storage needs. 

Lehrer Architects was given a program layout by the chief administrative office of the Los Angeles County. LA worked with the program layout to drastically improve the quality of the space and maximize efficiency. 

One of the spaces where this is evident is the employee cafeteria. This space serves as a hub between the warehouse and the administrative offices, and is the only place where all employees come together. It was critical that this area performed as an important communal space. This was achieved by taking advantage of the existing high ceilings and colorful fabric enclosure. The design also allowed greater access to natural light by locating it adjacent to existing windows and skylights.