CEE News Special Report on DATACOM, page 14 July 1999

Making San Francisco’s City Hall Smarter for the New Millennium

Datacom cable upgrade modernizes quake-damaged historic old building without damaging its integrity

The force of the l989 earthquake twisted the 90,000-ton dome of San Francisco City Hall like a cap on a bottle. The 83-year-old historic building’s walls cracked extensively, but the damage provided the opportunity for the building to be completely rewired for advanced communications capabilities. In doing the restoration, marble facing and hardwood paneling was removed from the steel skeleton to repair structural damage. Miles of interconnected fiber optic cables were then enclosed within the city hall’s newly restored surfaces.

The challenge for the 500,000 sq. ft granite-and-marble monument was to update technology without sacrificing historical character.

“The goal was to make San Francisco City Hall one of the smartest buildings in the world,” said Architect and Project Manager Tony Irons. Making the historical City Hall “smart” meant replacing badly outdated technology that had grown haphazardly within the building during the last few decades. Miles of cable snaked willy-nilly throughout the structure, often obscuring its historic Beaux-Arts character, marble floors, and Manchurian oak walls. Communication systems were antiquated, causing both the public and the press to sometimes wonder if the beloved icon-a national landmark-would ever function effectively in high-tech San Francisco.

National Historic Preservation Guidelines mandated that newly installed technology, no matter how innovative, could not obscure or mar the historic character of the building. Faced with a technological “Mission Impossible,” a creative team of architects, designers, and integrators from both the public and private sectors found a way through the puzzle.

The team included Tony Irons and his staff; consulting architect Heller Manus, Komorous-Towey/ and Finger & Moy joint venture architects; specialty consultant for sound, video and broadcasting Kenneth Fause of Smith, Fause and McDonald; and systems integrator Ceitronics Inc., Jim Thielemann, project manager. Their collaboration ensured the implementation of a number of complex technological systems that not only respect and maintain its historic character, but will carry the building through the next 25 years of sweeping technological change. “The conceptual plan offered by the public/private City Hall Telecommunications Task Force was to wire city hall as a smart building,” Fause said. “This was a long-term vision for effective technological use of the building one of the wisest uses of taxpayers’ money by the city.”

“What we are doing here is pretty unique,” said Yomi Agunbiade, San Francisco’s telecommunications project manager for the city hall renovation. “Historical preservations are rare and one of this size is almost unheard of.”

Restoring the building to its Beaux-Arts period wasn’t just a laudable goal. It’s also tied into a $100 million-plus funding commitment of the part of the Federal Emergency Management Authority -the largest FEMA grant in the country. In order to receive the money, the renovation had to comply with the guidelines for the renovation of a historic building.

The cabling system is placed behind existing facades and used as transport for all low-voltage communications throughout the building. The overall telecommunications design got the conduit successfully through the building without disturbing its historical character, and distributed it to 20 intermediate distribution frames throughout the facility. It was routed horizontally from the distribution frames to the office spaces. The key was putting as much conduit behind existing walls as possible, and running it from the basement, which houses most of the central locations for servers-without disturbing the historical character of the building.

Instead of installing one 6-inch conduit, it was often necessary to install 4-inch or 5-1/2 inch conduits because of limited space. Space and cooling limitations, as well as the historic character of the building, dictated that the majority of the audio-visual equipment be placed in the basement. The basement now contains two broadcast studios, the head-end computer control center, and routers for all of the video and audio systems.

The city hall audio-video integration is part of $293 million seismic upgrade and other improvements. With the limited amount of conduit between meeting rooms and the basement, “Smith, Fause & McDonald’s solution was to install networks on fiber as the transportation medium for all signal types,” said Jim Thielemann, project manager with Ceitronics.

Video is sent directly from cameras in the meeting chambers over fiber via transceivers in the basement. The video signals are then sent to a Pesa Matrix switcher for distribution. This allows the broadcast signals to originate a broadcast from any of five meeting rooms. Video broadcast signals are sent back up to the rooms via fiber for display on touch panels or on TV screens. For the first time, all public meetings can be broadcast to the general public as well as throughout city hall offices.

Audio is pre-amplified, digitized, and multiplexed. It is then processed by the Peavey Media Matrix equipment, routed and distributed by the routing switcher, remultiplexed, and sent back to each meeting room. There, it is converted back into analog and amplified for distribution in the room.

“This project had a lot of challenges,” Tbielemann said. “The tight schedule, considering the size of the project, was probably the biggest one. Coordinating with all the manufacturers, other contractors, and the subcontractors was another. Then there were all the technical challenges of the system itself, plus the unique applications. It was very complex.”

The City Hall Renovation Team

Client: City and County of San Francisco Tony Irons, project manager Yomi Agunbiade, Telecommunications Project Manager Ken Fause, Smith Fause McDonald, Audio Visual

Broadcast System Designer under contract with Heller Manus/Komorous-Towey, and Finger & Moy, a joint venture

Systems Integration

Jim Thielmann, project manager, Ceitronics Inc.

Sub Systems Integrators: BBI engineering, Media Matrix Programming Crestron Inc., Remote Control System Network Associates, computers and network hardware QSC, Custom Processing Software Belden, Canare, Lucent Technologies, Optical Cable Corp., and West Penn, Wires and Cables

 

Other Feature Articles

Making San Francisco’s City Hall Smarter for the New Millennium, CEE News Special Report on DATACOM, page 14 July 1999

New Communications System to Boost Public Participation, F.W. Dodge California Construction Link, Institutional Construction Feb.99

San Francisco City Hall’s Seismic Salvation The $293 million restoration reaches the punch-list phase, F.W. Dodge California Construction Link Institutional Construction Feb.99

Timeline of History of San Francisco City Hall, F.W. Dodge California Construction Link Institutional Construction, page 16 Feb.99

Retooled City Hall Is Finally Ready To Open, San Francisco Chronicle Front Page January 1, 1999

A Treasury of City Hall Trivia, San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area Focus January 1, 1999

Light Years, San Francisco Examiner Magazine Page 7 January 3, 1999

Gold-Plated City Hall, San Francisco Examiner Front Page Dec. 30, 1998

S.F. Celebrates Floating City Hall, San Jose Mercury News Page 3b January 6, 1999

Ceitronics: wiring San Francisco for the 21st Century, San Jose and Silicon Valley Business Journal Page 14 January 15, 1999

Retrofitting “City Hall’, Systems Contractor News Front page, con’t page 17 September, 1998

City Hall by the Bay, Sound & Communications Front page, con’t page 18 February 18, 1999