Photo Credit: ELS Architects
In 2016, the City of Millbrae tragically lost its Recreation Center to arson. The original 1960’s structure was a central meeting point for community groups and hosted popular youth summer camps, child-care programs and senior citizen classes. The community immediately began fundraising and planning for the construction of a new recreation center.
The resulting building, nearly 8,000 sq. ft. larger than its predecessor, achieved the city’s goal of providing a flexible facility that would serve as a hub for the community, while also introducing several unique innovations that make the new recreation center more sustainable and energy efficient. It features a fitness center, many multipurpose meeting spaces, a commercial-grade kitchen and outdoor play area. The building is all-electric, powered by solar panels on the roof, and designed to meet Net-Zero emissions standards. And it is one of the first projects in the San Francisco Bay Area to use a combination of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and structural steel, which reduced the building’s carbon footprint and also allowed the project team to deliver the building more quickly.
Making the Shift to Design-Build
The new Millbrae Recreation Center started off as a traditional design/bid/build project. But by 2019, the project was 15% over budget, and the city was facing a 4-year process to deliver the finished building. At this point, Millbrae retained Swinerton Management & Consulting as its Owner Advisor to reimagine the project as a collaborative design-build process. Changing to a collaborative design-build delivery process – even at the mid-point of design – allowed the city to cut the project schedule by more than half and deliver the project in less than 2 years to the Millbrae community. This was achieved despite several other challenges that the project team faced such as the COVID-19 pandemic, supply shortages, and the discovery of poor soil conditions on the construction site that required additional excavation and delayed the start of construction work.
The decision to change to design-build project delivery allowed the City of Millbrae to keep the project within the overall budget and, most importantly, delivered a new facility as quickly as possible to meet the needs of the Millbrae community.
Design-Build Team
Client/Owner: | City of Millbrae |
Design-Build Firm: | Blach Construction |
Architect: | ELS Architecture + Urban Design |
Engineer: | Forell Elsesser (Structural Engineer) |
Specialty Contractors: | Mercer Mass Timber |
Owner Advisor: | Swinerton Management & Consulting |
Project Cost: | $26,800,000 |
Construction Duration: | 18 Months |
Photos
![Millbrae Recreation Center](https://dbia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Millbrae-Recreation-Center-Community-1-1024x683.jpeg)
![Millbrae Recreation Center](https://dbia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Millbrae-Recreation-Center-Project-2-1024x683.jpeg)
![Millbrae Recreation Center](https://dbia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Millbrae-Recreation-Center-Design-1-1024x683.jpeg)