Construction work on a new East County Hall of Justice is underway with a formal groundbreaking held Wednesday in Dublin.
The new East County Hall of Justice will be constructed adjacent to Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail on 20 acres of county-owned land.
It will include two buildings, a 42,276-square-foot county building and a 146,435-square-foot court building, including a 13-courtroom courthouse. The two buildings will be joined by a 7,500-square-foot common entry lobby.
The new courthouse will replace a long-term leased facility in Pleasanton and will incorporate court departments from other locations in the county for improved access to court-related services for east county residents.
The project is the result of an extended planning effort initiated in 2001 by the county of Alameda and the Superior Court of California to develop a state-of-the-art justice campus serving eastern Alameda County.
The new justice campus will provide both county and court services to support the current and future needs of the residents of eastern Alameda County.
“We are very excited to see construction of this important project underway at last,” Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty said. “Thanks to a lengthy collaboration involving Alameda County and the state of California, this state-of-the-art complex will provide much-needed law and justice services to the residents of eastern Alameda County.”
The complex will include offices of the county’s District Attorney, the Public Defender and Probation Department, all to be located in the two-story county building and with easy access to the new courthouse.
The large campus will include substantial parking for county staff, court employees, law enforcement officers and the public including jurors.
The project is being managed by the Alameda County General Services Agency Technical Services Division team. The design-build general contractor is Hensel Phelps Construction, with the final design developed by Fentress Architects of San Jose.
The justice complex is designed using proven materials, means and methods of construction that emphasize durability, comfort and safety. The building systems are intended to optimize economy of operation for the county, which will own the county building, and the state, which will own the court building.
The East County Justice Center complex and grounds are designed to meet high resource conservation standards in order to obtain a LEED Silver certification as set by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Construction actually began last month and will take approximately 29 months to complete, with occupancy scheduled for early 2017.
