RHL Design Group Receives Design Award

PETALUMA -- The East Bay Business Times has awarded RHL Design Group the 2004 Commercial Architectural Design of the Year Award for the recently completed the Operating Engineers Local Union No. 3 Federal Credit Union headquarters in Livermore.

RHL was the architect for both the building and the landscape design. Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co. was the general contractor on the $10.7 million project. Construction began in June 2003 and was completed in July.

The East Bay Business Times annually recognizes one commercial architectural design that has, "reshaped the East Bay's landscape for the better," said Michael Hytha, the paper's editor. Projects completed in 2004 and located throughout the East Bay (Vallejo south to Livermore, Oakland east to Brentwood) were eligible to be nominated for the award.

Petaluma-based RHL designed the Operating Engineers Credit Union as a contemporary building incorporating plenty of glass and angular shapes and providing ample employee amenities and a park-like setting. The two-story 54,000-sq.-ft., steel-and-glass facility curves around a landscaped entry and is comprised of three buildings that surround a central courtyard on the south side of the campus. The building's glass faade allows light to stream into the spacious lobby featuring steel columns and an intricate, angular staircase. Off the lobby is a cafŽ that opens onto the courtyard where benches and picnic tables encircle a grassy area with a pond and waterfall, trees and shrubs.

The RHL Design Group team for the project was led by Cecil Spencer, and included Jay Baptista, Herman Hairer, Robert Forloine, Maisha Ruth, Mike Burgess, Ann Reynolds, Chuck Sanger and Connie Costisevschi.

Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction provides general contracting and project planning and management services throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and Southern California. Other contractors for the project included Shooter and Butts (landscape); Davison Ironworks (steel); Walters & wolf (glass); California Dry Wall (plaster, exterior and interior); DeSilva Gates (sitework, grading and paving); and Cupertino Electric Inc.

RHL Design Group is a multi-discipline architectural and engineering firm with seven offices in the United States.