San Diego Business Journal: $33.9M HQ coming for social services agency

POSTED BY SBCS | Aug, 19, 2024 |

News

A social services agency that serves more than 50,000 people annually throughout San Diego County is building a $33.9 million project in Chula Vista that will serve as its new headquarters and expand the services it offers. Designed by Tucker Sadler Architects, based in downtown San Diego, the 61,000-square-foot building at 318 Fourth Ave. will allow SBCS, formerly South Bay Community Services, to consolidate offices that are now spread throughout South County.“I’ve got people stashed all over the place here in South Bay,” said Kathyrn Lembo, CEO of SBCS. “This building will enable us to serve at least an additional 10,000 people a year.”Founded in 1971 as a drop-in center for teens struggling with substance abuse, SBCS has grown to have a staff of nearly 500 offering an array of social services. For nearly a decade, SBCS has used what had been a 6,000-square-foot Chula Vista house at 430 F St. as its headquarters, but the building has been so crammed that some of its staff must work out of garages, Lembo said when the new building is finished in May 2025, about 300 to 350 of the 500-person SBCS staff will move in with the rest stationed elsewhere in the county.

The new four-story building will have a steel and glass façade that allows sunlight to flood the interior, a dramatic change for some workers who’ve been working in windowless rooms, Lembo said. Tucker Sadler CEO Greg Mueller said that the design of the new building is meant to reflect the mission of SBCS, which “is about changing people’s lives, not just for the moment, but setting them up for their future and to give a positive outlook.” “The challenge was to put everything that South Bay Communities does so well into a design,” Mueller said. As people approach the building, Muller said the design is mean to instill a sense of hope “to subliminally let them know that this is where to go to get help, and this is where they can change their live entirely.”

Rather than a flat surface forming the front exterior walls, the floors are angled, shifting on a different plane from each other, and they point toward the building entrance at its center – a design element to symbolize how people’s lives shift with the services they receive inside, Mueller said.“It’s showing the movement within a person’s life and changes that can occur,” Mueller said. The blue tinted glass that makes up most of the exterior walls is both transparent and reflective, “in a way that allows a person to feel that there’s transparency in what’s happening, that what they’re receiving is something that is good for them and not something that is being pushed on them,” Mueller said, “to give the individual who’s going there the feeling of pride and that they are going to be getting assistance that’s going to help them change their life.”The glass walls and doors on the ground floor will have lighter tinting than the upper levels so people can see what’s happening inside as they approach the building.

“It gives them that warmth that they need to make that step to make a difference in their life,” Mueller said the building site is on what has become almost a civic campus with the Chula Vista police station and the city library as neighbors.

Outdoor Space

The first floor of the building is where many of SBCS’s services will be housed, including a teen center, a computer room that’s open to the community, a child- care room, a tutoring center, homeless services, and assistance for young adults who are no longer eligible for foster care because they have reached the age of 18. “We do a lot of work not only helping homeless people find shelter, but in finding permanent housing and with rental assistance to help people from becoming homeless,” Lembo said. The first floor will also have a family visitation area for parents required by a court to have supervised visits with their children, behavioral health services offices, and a leadership academy. An expansive courtyard opens off the first floor to the rear of the building and each of the upper floors have an outdoor terrace.

Lembo said that the need for outdoor meeting space became apparent during the COVID 19 pandemic. “We were doing a lot of our work in our parking lot, getting resources to families,” Lembo said. “Who knows when we may have another pandemic?” Beyond that, Lembo said that “a lot of times, when you’re working with people in crisis, it’s a little more soothing to them being outside instead of inside an office.” The second floor will be dedicated to services for children and the third floor will primarily be for administrative offices. Much of the interior space in the building will consist of open work areas. There will be offices for private meetings, but they will be clustered toward the center of the building and will have glass doors and walls, “so we’re capturing daylight no matter where you are in the building,” Mueller said. “It’s an open, collaborative space, almost like a living room,” Mueller said. “Everybody gets the views. Everybody gets the feel of the natural light and keeps that very healthy atmosphere to the offices that are on the inside.”

Additional, Future Construction

For now, the fourth floor will remain unfinished until SBCS is able to fill a construction funding gap of $6.7 million. To help raise money, SBCS is selling naming rights for everything from the entire building for $4 million to suites within the building for $100,000 each. Mueller said that everyone who worked on the project also contributed toward its funding. Among those working on the project with Tucker Sadler that also contributed to the fundraising drive were Alfa Tech Consulting Engineers, Buehler Engineering, Inc., KCS Specifications, ASR Landscape Architecture, NOVA Services, Inc., Jensen Hughes, Inc., The Dry Utility Group, Symmons, Schulter Systems, and Arizona Tile.

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