Calaveras County Courthouse

San Andreas, CA

Mitigating the extreme grade changes and rocky underlayment of the picturesque Sierra Nevada foothills is no easy task. Building an underground tunnel, too? That’s the sort of challenge Buehler’s engineers love to solve.

Equipped with four courtrooms, a full-height atrium with expansive skylight, monumental exposed stair, and underground tunnel for transferring inmates to and from the nearby jail, the new Calaveras County Superior Courthouse consolidates scattered County services in one building To fulfill the architect's vision for this building, which included a striking 32-ft cantilevered roof overhang, Buehler designed this building feature with the thinnest profile that provided adequate stiffness to minimize movement and deflection. The seismic-force-resisting system consists of structural steel special moment-resisting frames for the above-grade portion of the building. To limit the number of structural frames and impact to the space, two-way "cruciform" moment-frame columns were provided in several locations.

There was a substantial amount of rock encountered during excavation for the tunnel and basement. The team’s execution plan needed to be dialed in to accommodate the rock and the schedule. Although challenging, the architect notes that this project was “one of only two recent courthouses completed in California that had no contractor callbacks, no change orders, and no items to fix or repair.”