Platt-Whitelaw Architects

County of San Diego

Designing for Substance Use Residential Treatment Services (SURTS)

By

A Property and its Residents Get a New Lease on Life

The County of San Diego is committed to providing high-quality mental health and substance abuse recovery services. We’re fortunate to support this effort with architectural services for several buildings and campuses within the County’s Health and Human Services Agency program.

The Renovation

As part of the Agency’s Substance Use Residential Treatment Services (SURTS), we’re designing for the renovation and repurposing of a two-building property in National City.

The larger building is 270,000 square feet and shaped like an “H.” The previous owner was already using it as a dormitory, so the layout is well suited to a live-in detox and recovery center.

The 24 rooms are joined to shared restrooms and, thanks to the unique shape of the building, each room has an outdoor patio. Residents also have use of shared courtyards and common spaces.

The floorplate doesn’t require much changing, but with no as-built drawings available, one of our firm’s first tasks was to document the building. We did this with help from Zzyzx Imaging and its 3-D scanning and AutoDesk Revit technology.

The Work

Our scope of work includes the 200-page assessment we already finished for both buildings, as well as completely refurbishing the buildings, in and out, making ADA upgrades and incorporating a biophilic and energy-efficient design.

“For the large building, we envision screening it and making the mechanical system work with the building skin for maximum energy efficiency,” said Platt/Whitelaw Senior Associate Peter Soutowood. “We also hope to double-skin the building with vegetation and create a green roof.”

Our team plans to leverage the healing power of nature at the smaller, 6,000-square-foot building, too. Additionally, residents and staff will be able to use an adjacent garden that will be a great complement to the kitchen located inside.

The smaller building currently includes laundry facilities, but both the existing kitchen and laundry will be redesigned to make room for offices and other essential functions.

The Challenge

One of the biggest challenges to renovating the small building is creating an all-electric kitchen, which requires upsizing the electricity supply coming into the building. To help create a net-zero energy environment, our team will incorporate smart sensors into both buildings to inform their energy management systems.

While most our projects progress from design to construction to occupation, this one may be unique. With several mental health properties slated for renovation, the County may need to phase construction so that residents can be temporarily relocated or consolidated from one property to another.

We’re used to working closely with general contractors in these types of circumstances, especially because of our work with school districts. It’s often necessary to construct part of a project while the students and staff are using another part of the property.

The Best of the Best

In addition to a great project manager at the County’s Department of General Services, we’re lucky to work with terrific subconsultants on National City SURTS project. They include: KTU+A (landscape architecture), Turpin & Rattan Engineering (MPE), aark engineering (structural), Nasland (civil), WJE (fire suppression) and Orness Design Group (commercial kitchen consultant).

At the time of writing, the County has not yet selected a general contractor, but we anticipate project completion in late 2025. The County also plans to select an operator for the facility.

Thank you.

We’re humbled to work on projects that can help transform lives for the better and support our community in such important ways. We thank the County for this opportunity.

 

APWA Awards: A Banner Year for Our Clients

By

The vast majority of our firm’s architectural design work happens for public agency clients. That’s why honors from the American Public Works Association (APWA) mean so much to us.

We’re celebrating our clients’ wins this year at the San Diego APWA Awards Program:

Oceanside Crisis Stabilization Unit, County of San Diego – Project of the Year: Structure

  • Oceanside Crisis Stabilization Unit is a new, 24-hour, 7-day-a-week walk-in facility based on a living room model that offers a kinder, gentler approach to intervention and stabilization for anyone suffering from a behavioral or mental health crisis.

Bud Kearns Memorial Swimming Pool, City of San Diego – Project of the Year: Historic

  • The Bud Kearns Memorial Swimming Pool is an outdoor facility located in Morley Field Park in the North Park Community. First opened in 1933, it is San Diego’s oldest public pool. It was reopened this year after a two-year renovation process.

North Park Mini Park, City of San Diego (prime consultant: KTU+A)

  • North Park Mini Park is a new, half-acre park and plaza with family-friendly amenities situated behind the historic North Park Theater.

Ocean Beach Walkway, City of San Diego

  • The walkway needed rebuilding over a jetty to provide an accessible path of travel onto Dog Beach.

As projects of the year, Oceanside Crisis Stabilization Unit or Bud Kearns Memorial Swimming Pool could be selected by the jury to be recognized at the APWA San Diego chapter gala in the fall. That project would then get submitted to the national APWA competition.

Further North

It’s also worth noting that further north, the Ventura County APWA honored the City of Camarillo for its North Pleasant Valley Groundwater Desalter Plant. We teamed with engineering lead Brown & Caldwell and their partners to design a reverse osmosis facility. Here the city of Camarillo can leach enough salt from the groundwater to significantly reduce its reliance on imported water.

Congratulations to all of these agencies up and down Southern California for your vision and leadership and to the many firms that collaborated to bring these projects to life.

Photo Left to Right: Sandra Gramley.

Designing a Better Way for Behavioral Health Services

By

By Sandra Gramley, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C

The County of San Diego provides crisis stabilization units to deliver services in community-based or hospital settings for people experiencing a mental health or substance-use crisis.

For people in the midst of a crisis, being taken to a jail or hospital may not constitute an appropriate level of care. However, going to a place that has been specifically designed and staffed as the first line of intervention will likely yield better results in the short and long term.

Platt/Whitelaw has been fortunate enough to provide architectural design services for two of the County’s crisis stabilization units, including the Oceanside location.

Here, our firm created a way to transform a first-floor parking garage into a LEED Gold, 8,300-square-foot crisis management center for at-risk adults called the Oceanside Crisis Stabilization Unit. The center also includes landscaped indoor and outdoor spaces designed to promote peace and calm.

While not much about the past couple of years of pandemic seems fortunate, the unusual time of isolation and lockdown gave our designers an unexpected perspective about how to design the center. Mental health was in the limelight for everyone.

Our designers expressed this collective ethos through curved instead of hard edges and corners, landscaped green walls and water features, and a calming but diverse color palette.

“We wanted to give people a space that’s pretty and inspirational – a space that would let them know others care about them,” said Project Coordinator Yolanda Velazco.

Yolanda added that already having designed one crisis stabilization unit for the County meant the team was already full of ideas of what could be done, and what challenges they would need to address.

“We spent a lot of time in meetings going over door hardware,” she said. It turns out that creating a welcoming but secure center with separate entrances and treatment areas customized to different situations requires some very sophisticated door security technology.

Also notable was the design team’s approach to plumbing fixtures. Traditionally, a facility of this type would have stainless steel toilets, sinks, and faucets. Instead, the team found a way to use fixtures and finishes reminiscent of residential or high-end office spaces that still offered the safety required for a crisis stabilization unit.

The existing building presented a challenge, too. Our team had to navigate and incorporate many of the columns of the original parking garage into the design and provide the right balance of window and door openings. It took significant effort to develop ways for the covered parking structure’s transformation to include indoor and outdoor courtyard spaces, too.

As with all successful projects, the Oceanside Crisis Stabilization Unit took a village to design and build. We were fortunate to be teamed a second time with Turner Construction Company’s team, who also built out the previous crisis stabilization unit we designed.

Our collaboration with frequent sub consultants, landscape architect KTU+A and MEP engineers Turpin & Rattan, also paid off. And kudos to this project’s LEED consultant, Doo Consulting – LEED Gold certification came through for the Oceanside Crisis Stabilization Unit without a single hitch.

We commend the vision and guidance of the County and want to give a shout-out to its project manager, Project Management Advisors.

Our whole team was inspired by the chance to positively impact a sector of society that’s hurting.

If you or someone you know is looking for mental health or substance use services, call the San Diego Access & Crisis Line (ACL) at 1-888-724-7240 or visit this website for more information.

Watch San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher talk about Oceanside Crisis Stabilization Unit and the County’s efforts to build a better program for behavioral health services.