Dane County Justice Center
New Angles on 'Green' Building

by Elaine Schmidt

Designing a green building isn't easy.

Doing it on a budget, a hill and a small triangle of land that sits within shouting distance of the Wisconsin State Capitol makes the job even tougher.

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That's the story, though, on the $30 million Dane County Justice Center, a 256,000-sq.-ft., eight-story structure under construction in downtown Madison. Work began on the structure in April 2003 and will be complete in October.

Switching Sites

"The original site the client presented to us was 15,000 sq. ft. immediately behind the Public Safety Building," said Jerry Olson, project manager on the job for the Durrant Group, the architect and managing principal for the firm's Hartland, Wis., office.

The site was simply not workable. A slight expansion to the west of the site still did not create enough space to build the structure the county needed.
Olson, who called the project his most challenging and most rewarding, said,

"We took the bold approach. Durrant recommended that Dane County purchase two parcels of land, both occupied by buildings, in the vicinity of the existing structure and demolish them to create sufficient space for the new structure."

The county took this advice, allowing the building to be created. It will house 20 courtrooms, two to be left as shells for the time being, and offices for the district attorney, clerk of courts, court administrator, family services and others.

Step one was clearing the site. An existing office building was "deconstructed," with 99 percent of the materials from the demolition diverted from landfills.

According to the UW Extension Web site statistics on the project, 96 percent of those materials were recycled and 3 percent reused.

A 165-ton, two-story brick building, housing law offices, was moved intact to a new location a couple miles away, clearing the remainder of the site.

Taking the LEED

Olson said the building was designed following guidelines required for a Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design silver rating. This is the first Dane County project to fall under the county's sustainable green building design initiative.

"For the most part, good-quality architectural and engineering design will go a long way toward meeting the principles of LEED design," he said.

But the scrutiny involved in getting LEED certification required an additional expenditure that simply was not possible on the tight budget of a public building project. The UW Web site notes that the project tracked and demonstrated LEED points achievable, but added, "budget limitation compelled self-verification."

Among the design concerns involved in creating a green building is one of daylight. Bringing as much daylight as possible into the building reduces the amount of electricity required by building occupants.

Daylight concerns created the eye-catching, semicircular cutout on the building's Hamilton Street face.

"We basically carved a half-circle out of the building to bring light into the lobby space of the courtroom areas," said Kyle Clark, project architect for Durrant.

The cutout allows the upper four floors of the building to look out over a roof garden, which will be accessible to building occupants.

Spacing Concerns

Light concerns also dictated the space between the new Justice Center and the existing Public Safety Building next door.

"We had to be 10 ft. away from the Public Safety Building in order to have the requisite amount of window space," Olson said. "So we are 10-ft., 2-in. from the building." The two structures are connected by a tunnel.

A 2-in. margin is also found in the building's compliance to Madison's building-height restrictions, which allows the Capitol's dome to dominate the city's skyline.

"Nothing can be higher than the second ring of the Capitol," Olson said. "We are about 2 in. below that elevation."

The building mirrors the dimensions of the site. It's a triangular structure with a 90-degree corner and two 45-degree corners.

"We had a lot of puzzle pieces to fit together to work all the required elements into the building and get them all to function properly within the triangular shape," Clark said.

Accommodating Users

In addition to site and budget constraints, the design process was complicated by input from many of the building's future occupants as well as the city of Madison.

"We worked with a design committee of judges, a court reporter and various department heads, who have never gone through a construction project before," Olson said. He credited a court administrator who had been through the process in another city with keeping the committee on track.

"She just had a knack for reeling people back in whenever we started to have a bit of design creep," he said.

"We also worked closely with the city of Madison to come up with a design they were happy with and could live with because of the proximity to the Capitol and the square."

From a construction standpoint, the striking geometry of the building has not been a significant issue, but the extremely tight site has.

"We have very little laydown area on the site," said Paul O'Brien, senior project manager for general contractor Miron Construction of Neenah, Wis.

"This has required quite a coordinated effort for deliveries."

It also generated some creative partnering.

"We partnered with the owner (Dane County) and it provided some space at the Alliant Energy Center so that we could use that as a laydown area and truck things in as needed," O'Brien said. Still, most of what comes onto the site has to go up on the building as soon as it arrives, he added.

Safety was also a concern. The concrete structure of the stairwells and elevator shafts had to go in place ahead of the building's structural steel. A flying Aluma form system was used, but this was delicate work.

"We had guys 70 and 80 ft. in the air, working with the flying forms," O'Brien said.

Multiple preplanning sessions addressed safety concerns before the pours began.

"Once we were onsite, we had safety meetings prior to starting and during the process," O'Brien added. The safety precautions paid off, and there have been no accidents on the site.