The Long Beach Civic Center (LBCC), a multi-faceted development in the heart of downtown Long Beach, California, encompasses a new city hall and civic chambers, a headquarters for the Port of Long Beach, and a public library.
Located in the city’s urban core, the Long Beach Civic Center development includes nearly 600,000 square feet divided among four structures and spread across six city blocks. Outside the project’s vertical elements, the design-build team also delivered roadway and pedestrian improvements, creating public plazas and pathways that connect the new structures.
The architecture of the new Civic Center campus creates a stark contrast to the City’s prior municipal buildings, offering a vibrant civic hub that infuses new life into downtown Long Beach. The vision for the Civic Center focuses attention on the community-centric role that government plays in major cities, while also recognizing and celebrating Long Beach’s long and rich maritime history and its leading role in global commerce and trade.
Public/Private Innovation Fueled by Design-Build Collaboration
The LBCC is the largest municipal P3 in the nation and North America’s first municipal DBFOM. The project is also the first North American hybrid DBFOM to combine public infrastructure and private development within a single project. This approach allowed the City to replace existing facilities, plagued by a lack of seismic readiness, leaks and maintenance issues, and build a new Civic Center that will be affordable and high-performing over its lifetime, without taxing residents. Under this unique model, the City and contractors – the architect, builder, operator, and developer/financier – closely collaborated from the initial design phase throughout construction. This team approach encouraged the development of design solutions to address the long-term maintenance and operation of the buildings. As a result, the new facilities are far superior — delivering energy efficiency, seismic resiliency, and reduced maintenance costs.
Targeting LEED Gold certification, the new Civic Center optimizes operations and maintenance, maximizes street parking, introduces plazas and promenades, and expands bike infrastructure to create a hierarchy and quality of place, one that befits the city’s dynamic center for culture, recreation, education, and government.
Design-Build Team
| Client/Owner: | City of Long Beach |
| Design-Build Firm: | Clark Construction Group – California, LP |
| Architect: | Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP |
| Engineer: | Nabih Youssef Structural Engineers |
| Specialty Contractors: | Johnson Controls |
| Construction Duration: | 39 Months |
| Project Cost: | $429,000,000.00 |
Photo Credit: Matt Fukushima