Travis County Commissioners Court
May 20, 2008
Item 13
13 is to consider and take appropriate action regarding the programming and planning of the new precinct 1 office building. >> judge, we have a couple of representatives here from the elected officials that's affected in this particular agenda item. Glen with judge scott's office and also I willy madison, who may also want to participate in this brief discussion on this particular item. I知 just letting you know that they are present here today.
>> okay. Let's lay it out if we can.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners. Roger el khoury of facilities management. Last year in the budget process, the court approved the budget and the direction to go ahead and do a planning and programming for new precinct 1 office buildings because the existing precinct 1 office building is -- doesn't have any more space and you cannot expand on it. And as you remember last year we had to build a portable so we can have additional space for precinct 1 office building, especially for the judge's area. Today we're presenting to you a program and planning for a new precinct 1 office building, and just to let you know that when the program and the space design, we will -- if we move forward with the construction, the existing building will stay in operation until the new building has been built and then at that time if you would like to demolish the existing building or keep it,. With this I would like to introduce to you two of my staff. We have tiffany. She did the programming. And also gabe did the planning and both of them worked together to produce this -- the new buildings.
>> can you hear me okay? Okay. My name is gabriel stock, senior architectural associate with facilities management. I値l start briefly with the site plan and then we'll get more into the details of the plan and the program. But basically this is the existing site. We have springdale road heflan o here with the position of the building was to give it i-10 or more of -- more of an identity or focal point from the intersection. We heard that the building is tucked in the middle of the site and it's hard for people to fin trying to create the new building by doing this also it lets us tuck the parking the roo cr zone so there's not really that separation between you usually have parking lotingd away. This creates this nice landscape zone here and potentially here with the existing building is located. We also use this. This is the tax building that was built a year ago. That with this, the courtyard with the trees. This creates some nice around, that. And the form two main user groups. We have the jp so we thms, butre they intersect we created the public area where they will comearking here and we have a major bus stop also into the lobby. And then we haveurtroom here ate intersection also. This is a larger scale plan so I can see. This is the parking and where the courtyard is. This is the main entry from the parking I was describing and from the bus stop here. So a little double height lobby. We have some clear story above to let natural light in. And the orange space here, that's the public area. We have the lobby here, we have the restrooms. We have a meeting room that can be used for clients and attorneys before court. We have the courtroom here. And we're also creating down at this end close to the parking a public meeting area where we have a little kitchenette that can be used in off hours at night or weekends or whenever it needs to be. And there's restroom facilities here too. So it's kind of a standone gheyn an use this during the day for bigger meetings also. We can have a double feature. Up here we have the jp office. Up here we have the judges' office. They have their own access into the court. We have a secondary access where the jury could come in and out and this is also the connection to the jp. We have restrooms here that can be used for jp and the jury. The judge has their own restaurant. And we have -- has their own restroom. And we have five windows that work with the public. The public will come here. It's similar to precinct 3 what we did out there. We have the lobby and they come to the windows to communicate with the jp and we have the same thing with the constable here. What we're providing right now is 12 cubicles with expansion for eight additional. So the scheme we're showing you provides about double the employees that it currently has, so it's pretty much right on the 10-year expansion projections. Instead of building out shell space, though, all this would be built out. The desk cubicles could be future use, so in the future we can just simply add cubicles. There won't be any more cost when it comes to building out space, it will just be a furniture cost. So all this would be built out once. We're providing open shows directly behind the windows, file rooms, breakroom, meeting rooms, then four hard offices. The rest are going to be cubicles. And this is also help us with future expansion. It will have a really open feel. It can be easily manipulated in the future if they need more room. We'll also have daylighting from all sides with these offices here and daylighting from into the open space. The same over here with the constable. We have 14 cubicles that will be built out right away and we have eight also. Right now they share a break room and meeting room, so they have have their own breakroom, storage facilities. Here we have their breakroom and shower facilities here. And we have some hard offices, the constable office and a meeting room. The same there. Here this is what it would look like in elevation. This would be the elevation from springdale, so this would be the bus stop out here, so this would be the main elevation from springdale. You have your entry from the bus stop. You can see how we're doing a clear band of windows to articulate the facade. The main concept of this is we had two solid forms kind of colliding with each other. And then that's where that creates the public space here. And we're just taking the volume out from the windows. So you can see here the double height lobby with the clear storm here's where the courtroom would be here. We're kind of peeling back the stone and emphasizing the courtroom on the facade also right there. This is the elevation from the south. You see the public meeting area. And this -- the window wraps the corner. Then we have more clear stories for the lobby above. And these on the south facade we're using more of a punched opening where the offices are and that's to control more of the daylight in from the southside. And we try to keep the expansive glass on the north. Where we have it on the west avenue a lot of trees out there existing, so that will help shade that. And then this is the north facade.
>> so this would be from heflan road. You see it from the north facade into the jp. And this clear story window that we started here in the courtroom would continue and wrap around here. So it would provide natural light into the courtroom also. That was one of our main goals for sustainability, bring a lot of light in and also have future expansion and integrate a lot of vegetation local. And a lot of green space for people to enjoy. And also to leave the sites to the west over here untouched for right now. So that can be future use. Right now it's leaving that grain and instead of developing that right now. And then this is the -- let's see. The east elevation. And this is looking from over here from the tax office pretty much. And again we're using some punched opening where the walls are and you can see how we articulated the entry into the public zone there.
>> and a couple more items. The existing building right now is 6,288 square feet. What we're building right now, what we're proposed to build is 14,390. As gabe was saying, we will have a future expansion. That's like you shell is out and add the cubicles just like we did on the precinct 3 office building. And the parking situation over there, we're increasing the parking from 49 parking space to 88 parking space. It does meet the requirement of the city of Austin even more to meet the need of the -- I知 sorry. I知 sorry.
>> it wasn't me.
>>
>> questions?
>> judge, I just have a couple of them. We had some carryover budget -- we had about $50,000 set aside from carryover last year. And if the court decides to approve this action today, what would you actually be able to start on the design with that $50,000 that's been set aside?
>> we have the $50,000 allocated for planning and programming and getting surveys, geotechnical information and environmental assessment and that sort of thing. We do have all the surveying and geotechnical and we still have about like $44,000 in the budget. What we'd like to do is we would like the court give us direction to start on the design now rather than wait until October to start the design. And this will give a little bit head's up on our design. We can use as much as we can from what the 44 can give must the design so we can move forward.
>> and since there is a real urgency to alleviate the space crunch that they are experiencing out there, if the court would decide to authorize you to use $25,000 for that design, when could you possibly tell the court when this project would be complete from design to construction?
>> we have it on our time line schedule that the project will be done in November of 2009 or December 2009.
>> December of 2009?
>> yeah.
>> and judge --
>> it's about like --
>> I haven't had a chance to discuss some of these things with the two elected officials out there, and they have a couple of representatives. And of course they have signed off in the backup, judge scott and also constable mercer in aproving this particular project. And they have representatives here. I don't know if they want to say anything toward this end --
>> would you like to say anything?
>> thank you, Commissioner. I知 chief madison, precinct 1 constable's office. The constable couldn't be here today. He wanted to be here, but he had another appointment. He wanted you to know that he do approve this project. We have grown in precinct 1. We moved there in 1995. And right now the space there that we have, we have people in closets that we have made office space out there. So we do need this project to be approved for precinct 1. Thank you.
>> good morning, judge and Commissioners. My name is cherry johnson. I知 the office manager for jp 1. The judge was tied newspaper court this morning, so he did send me and yes, I aproves it. And I can tell you it really needs to be approved. When we moved there in mean 95, it was too small, and it's continued to be too small. So it's something that is really urgent and we would appreciate you voting to support the design.
>> there may be questions from other court members, but otherwise I would like to make a motion to support item number 13.
>> second. I have two questions because my first question has already been answered whether there are showers out there and there is a shower out there and is a very good thing. My two orbier ken stock wearing, tree hugging questions are, very nice open space. Will there be a walking trail? Such a lovely piece of property.
>> right now we're looking at the conceptual phase. What we're created here is pretty open to what we can do. So yeah, assuming the concept is approved, then we could definitely --
>> so we can have the healthiest workforce in the state of Texas.
>> we have that potential.
>> and secondly, where will the bike rack go?
>> oh, this isn't design. It will go next to the being. They will have about six bike racks just like normal.
>> any more discussion?
>> and just, that is with the -- the motion also includes the authorization to allow roger el khoury and his staff to use the $25,000 for -- to initiate the design, get it started.
>> it's about 45.
>> 45? Okay.
>> the intention is to do that in-house or contract it out?
>> we intend to do all the architectural coordination of engineering in-house, but we have to hire a mechanical engineers and probably structural engineer.
>> okay.
>> so the motion includes the authorization to continue?
>> yes, judge.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you, judge scott and constable mercer.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 8:51 PM