Project name: Crook County Justice Center

Location: Prineville

Completion: September 2024

Size: 67,850 square feet

Cost: $42 million

Owner/Developer: Crook County

Architect: Pinnacle Architecture, KMB Architects

Interior Designer: Pinnacle Architecture

Engineers: tk1sc, Harper Houf Peterson Righellis, PAE

General Contractor: Kirby Nagelhout Construction Company

Submitting Company: Kirby Nagelhout Construction Company

Other Associates/Key Consultants: LUMA Lighting Design

Subcontractors: Apollo Mechanical Contractors, Alpine Abatement Associates, Apollo Sheet Metal, Bell Hardware, Boles Brothers, Building Material Specialties, Carlson Testing, Center Pointe Signs, Central Oregon Garage Door, Consurco, Corebrace, Corona Steel, Corona Sud and Deck, Corrections Technology Group, Delta AV, Diversification, Eagle Roofing, Eder Flag Manufacturing, Environmental Controls, Fabulous Floors, Geopier Northwest, GH Surveying, Greenbar Excavation, Insulation Contractors, Interior Technology, J & R Fire, Johnson Bros. TV & Appliance, Lakeview Millworks Sales, LDC, Lets Construction Cleaning Services, Max Manufacturing, MC Interiors, Mike’s Fence Center, Morrison Hershfield, Mountain Sky, New Horizons Woodworks, North Rim Electric, Pacific Rim Microrem, Pence Kelly Concrete, Rasmussen Masonry, Safeguard Industries, Sauder Manufacturing, Schonert & Associates, SDB Contracting Services, Severson Fire Protection, Siemens Industry, Skyline Sheet Metal, Snider Landscaping, South Town Glass, Spacesaver Specialists, Steel Encounters, Systems West Engineers, The 4 Kids, The Harver Co., TK Elevator, TOMCO Electric, Tri County Paving, Tri-Star Detention, Van Nevel Concrete & Curb, Western Partitions, Western Protective Coating, WSP, York Bros. Excavation

After more than a century in an aging courthouse, Crook County departments have moved into a new 67,850-square-foot Justice Center that officials say will improve efficiency and public safety services.

The facility, approved by voters in November 2020, houses the Sheriff’s Office, Juvenile Services, Circuit Court and District Attorney’s Office under one roof in downtown Prineville.

The new Justice Center provides the community with a central facility for the entire county, rather than having the various departments operate out of separate buildings. The new building features a large lobby and staircase, jury assembly space, three courtrooms and associated offices for all departments. A community room is included for public events.

Pinnacle Architecture and KMB Architects designed the facility, while Kirby Nagelhout Construction Company (KNCC) built the steel and concrete structure.

Project leaders pointed to collaboration between the architects, contractor and county stakeholders as critical to success. The design team conducted early meetings with county officials and department heads to develop concepts accommodating multiple needs.

Once brought on board as the CM/GC partner, KNCC expanded on this by providing constructability and value engineering efforts to meet the overall intent of the project, according to the project submission form. This early involvement allowed the team to keep within the initial GMP budget.

Safety protocols were emphasized during construction in downtown Prineville. KNCC implemented perimeter fencing and signage to protect the public. The company held weekly on-site safety meetings with all workers. KNCC also reviewed current seasonal issues that posed a safety risk both on and off the jobsite.

The building’s design balances traditional and modern elements, incorporating architectural features that reference the historic courthouse building, including natural stone, concrete façade, traditional millwork and cornice roof.

While there were no minority contractor goals on the project, there was significant local participation, including trade partners from Prineville.

“The new Crook County Justice Center project reflects the success of a community coming together to build a facility to serve the entire county,” said Joe Waggoner, KNCC senior project manager, in the Top Projects submission form. “The building is a true representation of not only Crook County’s strong leadership, but the Prineville community’s support of that leadership. With this new facility, Crook County will be able to accommodate the needs of their citizens for another 100 years.”

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Mortenson Construction has started work on a $55 million data center expansion in Prineville. The project, code-named “Castle Rock,” is taking place on 154 acres owned by Apple Inc. at 1600 S.W. Baldwin Road in the Prineville Industrial Complex, according to Crook County property records.

This is the second part of the first phase of a two-phase master plan expected to result in an ultimate investment between $160 million and $200 million, said Lou Haehnlen, a Crook County building official who declined to name the developer.

The $30 million first part of the first phase included an administration building – a 50-foot-wide, quarter-mile-long “spine” – and two connected “pods” containing data servers. The spine allows for efficient energy transfer in and out of the building, Haehnlen said, noting that ultimately, the building will have eight total pods.

A second building also is planned with a main spine connecting eight pods.

“What they’re doing now is building four of the pods that are 40,000 square feet apiece where they will put their servers in,” Haehnlen said. “Once they get those built, they will attach to the spine.”

Mortenson expects to finish the four-pod expansion by January, he said.

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A few people might get some construction work, but otherwise, city officials in Prineville say a new 62,000-square-foot data center for Facebook will mean little for the local economy.

Facebook already has two data centers in Prineville on the grade east of town off Oregon Route 126. City Planner Joshua Smith said employees from those centers will staff the new facility. Facebook may yet bring in jobs, he said, but not with this project.

Prineville Building Official Lou Haehnlen said he has no idea how much the project is going to cost. “I got a set of plans, but no dollar amount,” he said. That will have to wait until the Facebook folks give him a cost breakdown on “Sub-Zero.”

“That’s what they’re calling it,” he said. “All these little data centers have their weird names. That’s just what they’re calling this one.”

Sub-Zero is not actually Facebook’s third building, Haehnlen said. It is actually more a supplement to the second building. “So for all intents and purposes, this is the third building, but not really,” he said. “But everyone’s calling it the third building.”

The social networking company operates a 224,000-square-foot data center in Prineville – with a twin building under construction next to it. Facebook executives filed plans for the third center this week. They may have plans for a fourth.

Smith said executives are considering a fourth building that would be more along the lines of the first two. “But that’s all up in the air,” Smith said. So is the start date for the construction of Sub-Zero.

“There is currently no time frame for when this building is going to be built,” said Facebook spokesman Lee Weinstein. Facebook’s executives just wanted to get the paperwork filed, he added.  “This building has always been on the drawing board.”

Facebook is not the only digital-age company that has taken a shine to Prineville. Amazon, Apple, Dell, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo executives also like the inexpensive electricity, moderate climate and tax breaks available in Central Oregon.

Apple executives are building a 10,000-square-foot data center on 160 acres across Oregon Route 126 from Facebook on land purchased from the City of Prineville in February. In exchange for a property tax break, executives promised city officials to provide 35 jobs.

Smith said Apple’s data center is unlikely to provide those jobs, so he expects Apple will eventually propose a larger development.

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Data center construction is booming, and Central Oregon is gaining more and more attention as the locus of the industry’s most innovative designs.

Facebook‘s huge complex in the high desert of Crook County, where crews are now working on a second 333,400-square-foot building, employs highly efficient technologies and serves as the model for the company’s other centers in North Carolina and Sweden.

But just a few years ago, Facebook was like many other Internet-based companies – renting space for its servers. As the international demand for space on Facebook exploded, however, the company began to work with a team of experts to design and build data centers that could meet its particular needs.

“Three years ago they realized they were growing so fast and becoming so big that there were strong financial incentives to start building and owning their own data centers,” said Josh Hatch, director of sustainability analytics at . The Portland-based sustainability consulting company is providing green building program management and incentives research for Facebook’s data centers.

“They ran into the classic renters’ problem: you can’t put too many holes in the wall or change the mechanical systems,” he said. “You end up paying more to have inefficient systems.”

Facebook is known for taking risks, and that includes construction and technology, according to Hatch.

“Facebook has an innovative culture – the unofficial mantra is ‘move fast and break things,’ ” he said. “These big data centers are clearly where they spend the most money and have the largest environmental impact … there’s no reason to follow the norm when you have an opportunity to change things.”

Facebook also is departing from industry norms by sharing its breakthroughs and setbacks via the , which is intended to encourage communication among data center designers.

The completed Prineville facility, which includes a 164,000-square-foot computer equipment room and a 100,000-square-foot mechanical equipment penthouse, is able to operate without traditional air conditioners – notoriously enormous energy consumers. As a result, Facebook’s Prineville data center uses 38 percent less energy than one of its comparable leased facilities.

Central Oregon’s low-humidity climate, new server designs and an evaporative cooling system combine to let 100 percent outside air be used for cooling.

In addition, all of the rainwater is captured and reused for all irrigation and toilet-flushing needs – an annual savings of 272,000 gallons of municipally treated water. Solar panels provide approximately 204,000 kilowatt-hours per year.

But the new technology challenged the construction team, led by a joint venture between and .

“The new technology requires a little more hand-holding as we commission the facility,” said David Aaroe, executive vice president at Fortis. “There are a lot of new applications for a lot of our subs who hadn’t previously dealt with technology for cooling and electrical systems, so there’s a slight learning curve, but they catch on very rapidly.”

Approximately 70 percent of the subcontractors that worked on the first Prineville facility are returning for the second one. More than 1,000 people have worked on both buildings now, with approximately 50 percent coming from the local area, according to data from the contractors.

The completed building recently earned a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating, and Facebook’s similar facility in North Carolina is slated to achieve the same honor in the coming months.

In addition, construction trade magazine . It is one of the 18 category winners being considered for ENR’s top honor, which will be named by magazine editors on Feb. 13.

“In the last six years, we have constructed over $1.2 billion worth of data center projects, and (the Facebook facilities) are by far the most energy efficient that we’ve ever constructed,” Aaroe said.

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Facebook’s Prineville data center recently received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. Overall, the data center requires 52 percent less energy to operate than a comparable facility built to code requirements.

“The certification shows that Facebook is committed to being an environmentally conscious, quality partner, not only on the internet but on the planet,” said Ken Patchett, Prineville site manager.

The facility is able to operate without traditional air conditions – which are typically enormous energy users in data centers – thanks to the low-humidity climate of Central Oregon’s high desert combined with new server designs and an evaporative cooling system.

The two general contractors, Redwood City, Calif.-based  and Portland-based , also are limiting their impacts.

Eighty-three percent of construction waste was recycled or reused, 27 percent of building materials used came from recycled products, and 30 percent of materials used were locally sourced and manufactured. Ninety-one percent of the wood used was Forest Stewardship Council-certified.

At the completed facility, 100 percent of rainwater is captured and reused for all irrigation and toilet-flushing needs, a savings of 272,000 gallons of municipally treated water per year. A solar energy installation generates an estimated 204,000 kilowatt hours per year, providing electricity to the office areas.

But the data center did encounter some problems along the way, which Facebook decided to make public so that other data center designers might benefit from the lessons learned. As a part of Facebook’s commitment to the , the company detailed the challenges it encountered due to an erroneous control sequence as well as other mechanical issues.

The problems were fixed, though, and were not serious enough to dramatically change the design of Facebook’s second Prineville facility, which will be nearly identical, according to Patchett. Construction on the second facility began in October.

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By bringing a data center to Prineville, Facebook hasn’t just helped the city; it’s been a boon to almost all of Central Oregon.

And therein lies the problem, officials in Cook, Jefferson and Deschutes counties say.

Facebook is the only one of its kind in the area and county officials say it’s time the large-lot industrial employer had company. Toward that goal, Deschutes County officials last week took the first step to implement a region-wide economic opportunities analysis that will help towns and cities in the county justify urban growth boundary expansions or zoning changes for industrial sites of more than 50 acres.

Not everyone is pleased with the plan, however. Local land-use advocates admit industrial companies like Facebook that require large tracts of land do help the area’s economy, but they think counties in Central Oregon would be better to focus on creating local jobs by courting businesses that don’t require as much land.

For more than a year, the tri-county area has been working with Economic Development for Central Oregon to compile the analysis, which will be entered into each county’s comprehensive plan and used to justify land-use decisions. It’s a move that was sparked by Facebook’s decision to come to the region, said Nick Lelack, Deschutes County’s planning director.

“The outcome (of the document) basically states that in the short term, about a five year period, we need six sites with a minimum of 50 acres each that are located within three different jurisdictions in the region,” Lelack said. “That way we will have an inventory and variety of suitable lands when a company came looking, and would be able to make a much more compelling pitch.”

The Deschutes County Planning Commission last week held its first public hearing about adding the analysis results to the comprehensive plan, and will take the issue up again at its next meeting on Aug. 25. Once the analysis results are part of Deschutes County’s comprehensive plan, which is expected to be done by the end of this year, Crook and Jefferson counties – and all of the cities within their boundaries – will follow suit.

The Central Oregon wing of the statewide land-use activist group 1000 Friends of Oregon agrees with county officials that economic development and land management are issues that should be dealt with at the regional level. But the organization has concerns about some of the assumptions in the analysis document.

According to Pam Hardy, a Central Oregon advocate with 1000 Friends of Oregon, the document simply states that large-lot industrial businesses are good for the economy, but never provides justification. She points to Facebook as a prime example. The company, Hardy says, used more than 100 acres in Prineville and only created 35 long-term jobs, a figure confirmed by Economic Development for Central Oregon.

“By placing the assumption that large lot employers create a strong and thriving economy in the vision statement, the document tries to avoid the task of making the case that employers that require large lots would actually improve the local economy,” Hardy wrote in a letter submitted into the record of the final document. “The document simply assumes that this is true.

“Actually, research shows that the opposite is true. The vast majority of job growth comes from existing small businesses.”

Lelack says the counties aren’t ignoring small local businesses. They’re just trying to diversify the types of employers in the region.

“This doesn’t replace any other efforts,” Lelack said. “It’s simply meant as a parallel effort in order to maximize the economic opportunities available.”

By using a region-wide economic opportunities analysis, Lelack said, local governments will have more authority to make sure land being rezoned or added to the urban growth boundary as large-lot industrial isn’t converted to another use, as often happens. Anytime the document is used to justify a land-use decision, there will be a stipulation that the land being considered must keep the large-lot industrial designation for a period of at least 20 years, he said.

Land-use activists aren’t convinced those large tracts of land will be enough to attract more companies like Facebook, however. Hardy says most companies like Boeing or Intel that require large tracts of land also usually need to be located near population centers of more than 300,000 people. Other factors they seek out: an interstate highway or seaport in close proximity.

Central Oregon’s tri-county area has a population of around 200,000, and while it has several regional airports, it doesn’t have access to an interstate or seaport.

Despite concerns about the direction the counties are taking with large-lot industrial land, 1000 Friends of Oregon earlier this year came out in support of the effort to try to plan on a regional level, said Mary Kyle McCurdy, 1000 Friends of Oregon’s staff attorney. It’s a good example of how regional planning can occur under current state land-use policy.

Lelack says the regional effort can help achieve another goal. Conducting such an encompassing analysis helps out of town employers realize that the area isn’t as small and rural as it may seem.

“We want to be more compelling from the 10,000-foot level, and this helps us do that,” he said.

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While Prineville often is a destination for campers, rock hounds and hunters because of its vast natural spaces and high desert terrain, Facebook selected the small town for its first data center because of other attributes.

Facebook that the size of its data center under construction in Prineville will be twice as large as planned originally. And Facebook is taking steps to ensure the 300,700-square-foot industrial building leaves the lightest environmental footprint possible.

The company, after a worldwide search, chose the Central Oregon town for two simple and logical reasons, said Ken Patchett, manager of the new data center.

The first, and most important, reason, he said, is Prineville’s climate. Because temperatures are generally mild for much of the year, the building’s cooling system will need to be used only minimally. Also, low humidity will allow the cooling system to run on relatively little power, he said.

The second reason is that in Prineville the company was able to start the project quickly because the property is in an enterprise zone. As a result, a possible zoning change process was avoided, and the permitting process was streamlined.

Speed was essential to the project because of the company’s exponential growth, Patchett said. The Facebook website has grown from fewer than 400 million users late last year to 500 million last month, sparking the need for a bigger data center.

The target is for the building to be certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold. Sustainable features include use of rainwater for landscaping and gray water, use of Energy Star-compliant appliances and creation of a system in which heat from servers will be captured and used to heat offices.

“Being efficient is very important to Facebook,” Patchett said.

The city of Prineville never asked Facebook to build a sustainable building, City Manager Steven Forrester said. But doing so has helped the project gain a substantial amount of community support, he added.

“From a city standpoint we weren’t concerned about the size of the building, or if (Facebook) wanted to get LEED certification, but rather the amount of water the facility needed to accommodate its operation,” Forrester said. “Our water system is meant for a small town, and this project, as it was originally designed, would have stressed it out.

“But the company is so up-to-date on technology that when we expressed those concerns they already had a newer cooling system that didn’t use as much water and allowed our water system to function properly.”

The two general contractors, Redwood City, Calif.-based DPR Construction and Portland-based Fortis Construction, also are limiting their impacts.

“Not a single truckload of rock has or will be brought on the site or brought off the site,” Patchett said. “All the rock that has been excavated is being crushed and used for backfill or paving.”

Facebook liked Oregon because of its push to use renewable energy sources, he added. The data center will be hooked up to Pacific Power‘s grid and will consume energy from hydroelectric, nuclear and geothermal sources.

Meanwhile, the project’s biggest impact may be on the community’s economy.

The general contractors are looking to a local union for basic labor and have subcontracted work out to Oregon-based contractors. Bend-based Hooker Creek is performing site work, Lake Oswego-based R.F. Stearns is performing steel fabrication, and Hillsboro-based Rosendin Electric is performing electrical work.

The expansion will keep 150 to 200 laborers working on the project through the end of 2011. They are making 150 percent of the local prevailing wage in Crook County – a great sign for the county with the highest unemployment rate in the state, Forrester said.

Facebook plans to hire about 35 full-time employees to operate the building. Also, part-time and contracted employees will maintain it.

Forrester said the city is excited about the number of jobs being created just to service the building.

“The community has honestly embraced Facebook since the company came to town,” he said. “Not only is the company helping us create jobs, but it has stepped in and donated money to our local sports teams and helped organize community events.”

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Facebook Inc. is growing, and it’s planning to plant some roots in Oregon. And construction this year of a new $188.2 million data center may employ 200 construction workers, according to project spokesman Lee Weinstein of Lee Weinstein and Associates.

The social networking Web site on Thursday announced the ground breaking of its new, 147,000-square-foot data center in Prineville.

According to , Facebook started out running on a single server and was created in the Harvard dorm room of founder Mark Zuckerberg. Now, with 350 million users around the world, the Internet startup needs a home for thousands of computer servers, which will allow users to post photos, videos and status updates more quickly.

According to Rem Nivens, a representative with the Oregon governor’s office, Facebook first approached the state about the possibility of building a data center several months ago.

“I think there’s a possibility we could attract more high-tech facilities to the state,” Nivens said. “Attracting one could lead to more in the future.”

Because a room full of a thousand computers can heat up quickly, plans for the facility include a highly energy-efficient evaporative cooling system that uses moisture from the outside air to cool the building. And the heat created by the computer servers will be captured to heat the office space when necessary. The goal is for the center, designed by Sheehan Partners Ltd. of Chicago, to achieve LEED gold certification.

Applications for 35 full-time positions as well as part-time and contract positions, such as janitors and landscapers, will be accepted beginning in the third quarter of 2010. According to an economic impact statement on the Facebook Web site, employees will earn 150 percent of the local prevailing wage in Crook County.

“The loud and clear message we heard today from the citizens of Prineville is how important diversification is to their economy,” said Weinstein, a communications representative for the project. “The remarks we heard from local people were very moving. Diversification is key for rural towns like Prineville to survive.”

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