Resources Building Renovation

Sacramento, CA

The 17-story Resources Building, located just two blocks from the State Capitol in downtown Sacramento, underwent a comprehensive teardown and renovation that completely revamped the 61-year-old building. The overall goal of the project was to extend the building’s useful life and completely upgrade all infrastructure systems, bringing the building to the forefront of desirable workspaces owned by the State.

Prescribing the appropriate seismic retrofit measures necessitated shoulder-to-shoulder teamwork. Buehler collaborated closely with the Geotechnical Engineer to select the appropriate ground motions needed for analysis. Next, a nonlinear time history analysis was performed on the as-built structure that incorporated these seven ground motions in each direction. This analysis helped determine the building’s current level of seismic performance and identify solutions. One of these solutions included the incorporation of fluid viscous dampers, which limited the force and drift demands to the existing steel truss moment frame system. Several more iterations of the nonlinear time history analysis were then completed to determine the most efficient placement of the dampers and minimize the necessary strengthening to the deep pile foundations. At project’s end, a total of 128 fluid viscous dampers were added. The nonlinear analysis was completed per the requirements of ASCE 7-16 with ASCE 41 used as an additional resource for modeling parameters and acceptance criteria.

Other elements of the project involved reconstruction of three 17-story exit stair towers, replacement of asbestos-containing fireproofing, and installation of a building-wide fire sprinkler system. The building is expected to achieve LEED Silver certification, ultimately fulfilling the State’s goal of bringing it “from worst to first”.