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For years, the aging Forest Grove City Hall and neighboring engineering building struggled to keep pace with the needs of employees and the community in general. The city knew it needed a transformative upgrade.

Lease Crutcher Lewis, tasked with this monumental project, set out to redefine the landscape of Forest Grove’s civic heart. The plan was ambitious but precise: demolish the engineering building and introduce a two-story, 8,500-square-foot Design Service Annex (DSA) to City Hall. To support and complement the new addition, Lewis modernized and renovated the existing 10,000-square-foot Forest Grove City Hall building’s interior to improve functionality and create a more welcoming space.

Early in the design process, the team decided the DSA would be built using mass timber. In addition to the sustainable benefits, mass timber construction provides a biophilic response with visual cues from the color and grain of the wood. Lofty ceiling heights maximize natural light. Glulam beams were all hung on concealed beam hangers manufactured by MTC Solutions. This meant there were no visible beam hangers, resulting in a clean, streamlined look that highlighted the beauty of the wood structure. Interchanging panels of fritted glass were used on the window wall, reducing solar heat gain and providing a comfortable environment.

The new addition sits between an existing historic building and City Hall. A service alleyway with utility lines and a steep grade change were west of the site. Neighboring buildings had shallow footings, so pouring deeper footings for the new DSA building required innovative thinking to mitigate the risk of undermining existing building foundations.

Existing buildings surround the site on three sides, so the new DSA addition had only its east façade for access to views and natural light. The architect strategically used skylights, window systems and sunshades, designing a façade that reflects the cadence, proportions and depth of nearby historic structures.

Project challenges included site constraints and the unknowns of the existing structures. Another challenge was City Hall’s history and prior uses. The building’s former lives included a police station, jail and fire station, and it had undergone numerous renovations. As a result, many structural discoveries emerged during construction, including an undocumented bearing wall that was initially planned for demolition, necessitating a redesign.