Case Study:
CalPERS Headquarters Complex

Close to home: A headquarters consolidation more than fills its predecessor’s big shoes.

By Jessica Boehland

The california public employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) is the nation’s largest public pension fund, with 1.5 million members, more than 2,500 employees, and an investment portfolio valued at more than $220 billion. So, when it decided to expand its Sacramento, California, headquarters, the organization thought big. The resulting project, covering two downtown city blocks, includes 550,000 square feet of office space, 25,000 square feet of retail space, and parking for 1,000 cars. Three residential developments totaling another 180,000 square feet are either underway or planned for nearby sites.

CalPERS took its design inspiration from its existing home, Lincoln Plaza North, which was completed in 1986. Featuring raised floors, extensive daylighting, and 180,000 square feet of roof terraces, Lincoln Plaza had convinced the organization of the potential value of green design. CalPERS wanted the expansion to complement Lincoln Plaza while projecting an image of stability and permanence, providing a productive and comfortable work environment, and creating a lasting and meaningful contribution to the organization and community.

“From the very beginning, CalPERS saw this as their home,” says Anthony Markese, AIA, design principal at Pickard Chilton Architects of New Haven, and the organization treated the expansion as a long-term investment. Both the CalPERS chief of plant operations and the project’s green building consultant were embedded in the design process from the beginning, says Diana Proctor, project manager at CalPERS. That involvement helped the team maintain “a consciousness of operations and maintenance” throughout the design and construction process, according to Proctor.

The organization planned the new project for a rectangular site with the long sides facing north and south, a boon for daylighting. At more than a million gross square feet, however, the project’s sheer size threatened its ability to capitalize on this orientation. In response, the team broke the project into two U-shaped buildings—one four stories tall and the other six—facing one another. This decision not only permitted daylight to reach a greater percentage of the interior space, but it also accommodated an existing street bisecting the site and allowed for a public courtyard inside the donut-shaped building.

The team then designed the interior to make the most of this daylighting potential. Thanks to its raised floors, the project features floor-to-ceiling heights of 10-feet 8-inches, about 2 feet taller than usual, allowing more light to enter each floor. Additionally, the team located enclosed rooms at the interior of the relatively thick bases of the U-shaped buildings, devoting the perimeter to open spaces. “It was a more democratic way to share light and views,” says Markese. Paired with facade-integrated planters supporting native grasses, exterior and interior lightshelves provide shade, reduce glare, and bounce daylight deep into the building.

Replacing surface parking with below-grade parking allowed designers the freedom to sculpt the building.

CalPERS was designed to use 38 percent less energy than a comparable building designed in minimal compliance with ASHRAE 90.1-1999. Its energy-efficient features include not only daylighting, but also glazing with a U-value of 0.26 to 0.29 and a solar heat-gain coefficient of 0.38, operable windows in some areas, underfloor air distribution, and the recovery of waste heat from chillers to make domestic hot water. A platform on the building’s roof shades mechanical equipment while also supporting an 87-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) array. “We were quite lucky in that SMUD [the Sacramento Municipal Utility District] had a system in place where, if you provided the structure, they provided the PV panels,” says Markese “and CalPERS had some foresight to say ‘let’s take advantage of this.’”

Among the design team’s most significant decisions was eliminating on-site surface parking. While some parking is available under an elevated highway less than a mile from the site, the majority is located on two levels under the complex. The strategy “really transformed the building,” says Markese. “It provided the freedom to sculpt the building, to create spaces that would be a gift to the city, and to not have to deal with the empty facades of a parking garage.” It also reduced the project’s development footprint and its contribution to the urban heat-island effect.

When the design team began work in 1999, the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System was in its infancy. “This was definitely the first LEED project that anyone on the team had worked on,” says Markese, noting that “the precepts and the structure and the aspirations of LEED dovetailed perfectly with the aspirations CalPERS had set for their building.” Lynn Simon, AIA, the project’s green building consultant, says LEED established a green framework for the project and clarified the green building responsibilities of various team members. Perhaps more importantly, she remembers, it also “demystified green building” for many people involved with the project.

Although the project achieved a Gold LEED rating, CalPERS’s commitment to green design went beyond the rating system. Even though furniture was not covered by LEED at that time, for example, the team sought furniture with low chemical emissions. CalPERS also chose to use FSC-certified wood for most interior uses despite its cost-based decision to use conventional wood formwork, rendering the project ineligible for LEED’s FSC-wood credit. In the end, a credit interpretation ruling on an unrelated project allowed CalPERS to remove the formwork from its FSC calculations, securing the credit after all. “There was never a decision to get a point just to adhere to the scorecard,” says Markese. “If you do that, you might miss an opportunity to think about the building in a more holistic way.”

Among the project’s frustrations was the state’s bidding system, which prevented the team from sole-sourcing specific products. Carpet tiles proved particularly frustrating for the project’s interior architects. Doug Bregenzer, of Interior Architects, says, “To get three manufacturers that had high-quality products with recycled content, and to get that in a similar price range, was extremely challenging.” The bidding system also meant that the project employed many more contractors and subcontractors than it might have otherwise, complicating communication and LEED documentation.

The lag between the project’s start in 1999 and completion in 2005 meant that some design strategies and product choices seemed outdated by the time CalPERS occupied the building. The ballasted white roof, for example, did not qualify for the LEED credit for heat-island mitigation. “Today there are more options,” says Simon. Bregenzer wishes the team had pushed harder for waterless urinals, which were uncommon at the project’s outset but have gained a foothold in recent years. Of the five LEED points for water efficiency, CalPERS achieved only one, for reducing irrigation by 50 percent.

As is common in green buildings, CalPERS’ mechanical system has required “a variety of tweaking to get right,” says Proctor. “We’ve just been in a year, so we’re getting our feet on the ground and getting all the kinks worked out.” Involving the commissioning agent in the design process instead of waiting for construction might have helped with that process and other issues, notes Simon.

CalPERS employees appreciate the new building, reports Proctor, but not as much as one might expect. While the occupants enjoy its daylighting and air quality, most of them relocated from Lincoln Plaza, which also has good daylighting and air quality. “[The new headquarters] building is beautiful,” says Proctor, who is among the project’s occupants “but the people who are here moved from a very beautiful building. If they’d come out of a typical building,” she notes “they’d have been blown away.” Since the expansion was completed, CalPERS has hired Simon to direct Lincoln Plaza’s application for a LEED for Existing Buildings certification.

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