An innovative approach to a correctional facility that shares a cross street with a residential neighborhood is a project requiring buy-in from more than just ownership. For this public facility, community involvement was essential to meet public expectations of safety and to achieve sustainability standards of low energy use costs. The Las Colinas Detention and Reentry Facility in Santee, California, was a design-build project that features six levels of security and was designed with a focus on inmate rehabilitation, to prepare them to reenter society and minimize recidivism rates.

Glumac provided MEP engineering, and lighting design as well as energy modeling services for the entire facility – which comprises 26 buildings across 46 acres – and helped the project achieve LEED Gold certification. Traditional lighting requirements for a detention facility are high demand, flooding nearly every inch of the campus with bright white light to ensure safety. However, the tight proximity to residential space and the facility’s sustainable building design goals demanded a creative solution.

This led Glumac to create a lighting system designed for the digital eye rather than the human eye. The facility doesn’t feature a single guard tower, instead making use of an extensive network of security cameras to monitor the Detention and Reentry Facility. Glumac’s Lighting Studio designed a responsive system that minimizes the output to a point that allows the cameras to function properly while not flooding the night sky with light pollution and distressing the neighborhood. Operable amber nightlights were placed in prisoner cells in lieu of regular, white light fixtures that would run throughout the night. Guards were given control of the lights to use when they deem necessary, and the color – which is less taxing on melatonin production – optimizes the circadian rhythms of inmates, improving their psyche, which leads to an overall improvement in safety during the day-to-day operations of the facility. Daylighting was also prioritized in the day rooms of the Level 1 area (library, cafeteria, religious facility, etc.) to provide energy savings and create biophilic connections to nature, which supports the morale of guards and the rehabilitation of inmates.

A central plant was constructed from the ground up, rare for a campus of this size. The plant provides chilled water for the facility, which can house more than 1,200 inmates. The plant was constructed outside the Las Colinas Detention and Reentry Facility’s fence to provide a safe working environment for maintenance staff.

Awards

• USGBC-LA Sustainable Site Honor Award
• USGBC-LA Health & Wellbeing Merit Award
• DBIA Design Excellence Award
• DBIA Regional Award
• AIA Academy of Architecture for Justice Facilities Review, Award of Excellence Citation
• AIA San Diego Merit Award – Interiors
  
• CMAA National Project Achievement Award
• CMAA San Diego Project Achievement Award

Size: 26 buildings/512,537 sf
Cost: $268 million
Completion Date: 2015
Architects: KMD and HMC
Contractor: Balfour-Beatty and Barnhart
Owner: San Diego County
Services: MEP Engineering, Lighting