10 Years in the Making

City of Corcoran breaks ground on the TETER-designed new Police Headquarters.

Originally published by THE SENTINEL on August 18, 2018. 

CORCORAN – A plan that has been 10 years in the making is finally coming to fruition.

By this time next year, Corcoran Police officers will have a brand new 10,400 square-foot facility and will no longer have to remodel closets to fit more office spaces.

The new facility is made possible by the $8.7 million in state money that was recently awarded to fund new public safety facilities for the Corcoran Police Department and Kings County Sheriff’s Office.

The Corcoran Police Department received $1.7 million of that money to fund a new facility.

In 2015, Assemblyman Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield) secured $5 million for public safety infrastructure in Kings County, including $3.82 million dollars for a new police facility in Corcoran.

The city had been working for over three years to secure the remaining funding necessary to replace the current 4,000 square-foot Corcoran Police Department facility that is over 75 years old. With the additional funding secured this year, the project now is fully funded.

The new building, which will be located on the corner of Hannah and Otis avenues in Corcoran, will bring all the department’s operations into one building and will include a temporary holding facility, an emergency operation center that can also be used as a community meeting space or training area, a fitness room for officers and staff, and a fully-enclosed secure entryway to improve the safety of officers and prisoners.

“It has a lot of good components that I think are going to benefit the city for a long, long time,” Corcoran Mayor Ray Lerma said, jokingly adding that he expects the building to last the city for another 75 years.

Corcoran Mayor Ray Lerma thanks everyone involved with securing money for the new Police Department Building.

City officials also hope the new facility will improve the public’s experience at the department, in turn promoting positive community engagement and interaction.

Along with Lerma, several people who were key factors in securing the funding spoke at the facility’s groundbreaking ceremony, including Salas, Police Chief Reuben Shortnacy, Corcoran City Manager Kindon Meik, Kings County Board of Supervisors chairman Richard Valle and Chuck Jelloian from CrisCom Company.

One thing all the speakers agreed upon was that securing this funding was a team effort that included tenacious pressure form police, city, county, and state officials.

Salas said, “It really took all of us coming together to make a difference and I can’t wait to walk through the new facility.”

Assemblyman Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield) speaks at the groundbreaking ceremonies for the new Corcoran Police Department facility.

The new building, which will fittingly be addressed at 911 Hanna Avenue in Corcoran, is expected to be completed March 2019.

“This is just one more thing to help us provide the level of service that this community expects, and what they deserve.” Shortnancy said.

Corcoran Police Chief Reuben Shortnacy talks about the planned Corcoran Police Department facility.

 

New C.O.S. Student Pavilion in Metal Construction News

C.O.S. Student Pavilion Featured in MCN Magazine

The new Student Pavilion at the College of the Sequoias was designed by TETER Partner and Architect Stan Canby and is featured in the EDUCATION PROJECT FOCUS section in the July 2018 edition of Metal Construction News.

“TETER LLP designed College of the Sequoias’ student pavilion on an existing open lawn area to become a centralized focal point on its Hanford Educational Center campus. The 43,000-square-foot pavilion and amphitheater are constructed with a steel structure, metal roofs and perforated metal wall panels.

TETER designed the open-air structure to meet multiple objectives. The student pavilion connects campus buildings, provides year-round, shaded shelter, establishes an entertainment space, encourages peer collaboration and allows for flexible teaching configurations.

Stan Canby, senior partner at TETER, says, “The spacious and open structure engages its visitors, providing a different visual sense of being from all angles. In addition, the pavilion serves as a campus hub for the exchange of ideas and collaboration between members of the school community, encouraging cross-pollination across the College of the Sequoias’ student body.”

The pavilion’s roofs are supported by a geometric pattern of triangulated steel pipe columns. The steel pipe columns give it visual drama and coordinate with the main campus entrance. Access to the pavilion is straight ahead when entering the campus core between two large campus buildings. The buildings are connected with an angled pipe brace structure supporting a flat roof. The braced pipe roof supports echo the pavilion’s pipe support system.

The pavilion’s exposed structural steel and the underside of the metal roof were painted with Sherwin-Williams Coil and Extrusion Coatings’ (formerly Valspar Corp.) High Reflective White paint.

Standing seam roof panels are attached to three roof planes. The largest two roof planes cover the main pavilion floor area. One slopes up and appears to overlap the other, which slopes downward in the opposite direction. An off-center intersection of the upper and lower roof planes creates a clerestory, which provides ventilation to the covered areas below.

The third roof plane is triangular, oblique and slanted. It extends over an elevated stage for events addressing an amphitheater audience. “The triangular roof plane intersects the two main roof planes in a skewed fashion, appearing as a visual anomaly of interest from all vantage points,” Canby says.

Golden State Steel fabricated the structural steel. Mid-State Steel Erectors Inc. installed the structural steel, metal roof and wall panels. The project utilized 5,959 square feet of AEP Span’s 16-inch-wide Span-Lok HP standing seam roof system in Zincalume Plus and Cool Colonial Red.

For the upper roof and its perimeter fascia, Mid-State Steel Erectors installed 2,643 square feet of panels in Dura Tech 5000 Zincalume Plus. For the lower roof and its perimeter fascia, the company installed 2,656 square feet of panels in Zincalume Plus.

For the oblique roof and its perimeter fascia at the stage, Mid-State Steel Erectors installed 660 square feet of Span-Lok HP panels in Dura Tech 5000 Cool Colonial Red with a clear coating.

For screenwalls, Mid-State Steel Erectors installed perforated metal panels on angled pipe bracing at the exterior column lines. It installed 200 square feet of Steelogic LLC’s US-06 metal wall panels in Red, which matches the stage roof’s Cool Colonial Red, and 175 square feet of US-06 panels in Blue, which matches an adjacent building. The panels are perforated with a 40 percent open area and the project was completed in September 2017.

One challenge was fitting the pavilion and amphitheater into the topography. The pavilion is at the lowest point of a 4-acre, lawn-covered pond basin. The floor level of the structure is 4 feet below surrounding buildings. “The solution was to design ADA ramps for access to the structure’s main floor level,” Canby says.

The amphitheater was created by integrating a 90-degree circular, stepped grass section into the sloped bank of the basin. “Concrete curbing was used to delineate the stepped levels to accommodate audience seating and orient focus towards the stage,” Canby says. “Access to audience seating was also ramped where steel pipe handrails and guardrails were provided for audience access safety.”

TETER-Designed Woodlake Plaza Featured in MCN Magazine

The City of Woodlake’s new Plaza, designed by TETER Partner and Architect Stan Canby, is featured in the “Project Focus” section of the June 2018 edition of Metal Construction News.

“A pavilion amphitheater stage and entrance structures at Woodlake Plaza coordinate with other redevelopment projects in the City of Woodlake’s downtown including transit center shade structures and a planned community center, which is adjacent to the plaza. All the projects have stone, plaster and tile roofs. Additionally, the pavilion roof color, Cool Terra Cotta, is consistent with the transit center’s terra cotta tile roof and the future community center’s roof color.

TETER LLP designed the pavilion as a light, airy shape that emphasizes its steel structure and metal roof deck. It has cantilevered steel columns that rise from large stone buttresses. The columns support a pair of radius steel beams with 10-foot-long, cantilevered tails. The radius beams and tails support cantilevered steel purlins. Bradford Steel Construction Inc. fabricated and erected the 10-ton structure including columns, radius rolled beams with 10-foot cantilevered tails and purlins. Jim’s Supply Co. Inc. supplied the structural steel.

To construct a curved roof for the pavilion, Four C’s Construction attached standing seam panels to the purlins. The company installed 2,000 square feet of AEP Span’s 24-gauge, 16-inch-wide Select Seam Narrow Batten metal roof panels in Cool Terra Cotta. Advanced Metal Works Inc. fabricated and installed gutters and trim.

TETER also designed two entry structures to the plaza, which is at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, with architecture similar to the pavilion. They have steel columns rising from stone buttresses. Attached to the columns are radius tube steel beams and cantilevered tails in-filled with flat sheet steel. Bradford Steel Construction fabricated and erected the entry structures, which is painted to match the pavilion.

The entries have wrought iron gates and, at the perimeter of the site, a 6-foot-high wrought iron fence abuts the entry structures and secures the plaza. The project was completed in September 2016.”

TETER Teaches at Tech Trek

TETER’s Professional Women Participate in AAUW Tech Trek

TETER’s Professional Engineers helped young ladies discover their potential in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) at the 2018 American Association of University Women (AAUW) Tech Trek summer camp.

Rebecca Jennings, Camp Director of Fresno Tech Trek at AAUW had this to say:

“It’s important that these young women are encourage to pursue STEM fields not just by their teachers, but by role models who work in those fields. Having our Structures class taught by a working engineer provides an experience that these girls can’t get at school or in other settings. Additionally, TETER employees bring their real world experience in STEM and share their personal journeys with our campers when they participate as speakers in our Professional Women’s Night. It all helps our campers to be able to envision themselves as engineers and architects, rather than just hearing that they can be one.”

For the past three years, Megan Chang, Professional Engineer at TETER, has taught structural engineering to 8th grade girls at summer STEM camps:

“I volunteered because I’m passionate about giving back and helping aspiring engineers to find their way. Teaching at Tech Trek is a way for me to re-visit the basics and pass them on to those who are already interested in building. Giving them the tools to design bridges and buildings to meet specific criteria using a variety of materials gives the girls exposure to the joys of the real-life problem solving they’ll experience if they continue on the path towards becoming a structural engineer. I hope the seeds I planted will continue to grow in their lives and turn into the next generation of people applying their talents towards building a better valley.”

Megan Armendariz (Professional Engineer at TETER) explains how architectural drawings are produced to Tech Trek campers during Professional Women’s Night.

Tech Trek campers listen attentively to Sophia Nyberg (Mechanical Engineer-In-Training at TETER) during Professional Women’s Night.

Megan Chang (Professional Engineer at TETER) supervises campers at 2018 Tech Trek.

Construction underway at Lemoore High School

TETER-designed projects at Lemoore High School are actively under construction.

 

Originally published on THE SENTINEL on June 14, 2018.

LEMOORE — This summer Lemoore High School has begun work on its bond projects from Measure L in 2016.

Debbie Muro, the Lemoore Union High School superintendent, said the district hopes to have all work in this first set of projects completed in November.

The first bit of work on any of the bond projects began in March. Since then the school has completed five projects of the 10 projects for the year.

Completed projects include installing new cables, painting the main building, installing a new well, repairing roofs and installing a service road for fire and safety.

The projects still being worked on are creating new concessions and restroom buildings for Tiger Stadium and between the baseball diamond and tennis courts, building a press box for the stadium, making a new walkway on the home side of the stadium, remodeling the weight room, transforming an old shop building into an engineering building, building an athletic building with room for cross fit classes and building two classrooms at the ag farm.

Lemoore High School’s new Press Box will be completed in 2018. (Rendering by Arnoldo Espindola, TETER Job Captain)

Measure L from the November 2016 election was passed with around 66 percent. It was a $24 million bond measure.

As of May 2017, the district sold $11 million in bonds funding the current round of projects.

“We plan to go out to sell the remainder of the bonds in May of 2019, if our tax base can support it, to complete the remaining projects. Otherwise, we plan to sell Series B Bonds in 2020.” – Mark Howard, director of business services for the district

Muro said that next year the school is hoping to re-plaster the pool and create shade structures. The district originally planned on doing this project this year, but due to a paperwork mishap had to hold off.

With that project, the pool would have been closed for the summer. (Pool project is not designed by TETER.)

Other future projects include a tennis court expansion, a new academic building, a science building remodel, the resurfacing of the stadium parking lot, a library remodel, energy management systems expansion and landscaping improvement projects.

Lemoore High School’s new Academic Building. (Rendering by Arnoldo Espindola).

Lemoore High School’s new Academic Building. (Rendering by Arnoldo Espindola)

 

Some of the other projects on the table will bring improvement to the Jamison High School site — a new administration building, a new multipurpose room and upgraded portable classrooms.

“All of the bond work is in addition to the work they already have to do for regular maintenance.” –  Michael Doria, facilities director for the district

Some of their regular maintenance planned projects include new flooring or carpeting in the gym, cafeteria and presentation center.

 

Byron Dietrich Returns To TETER

IT STARTED WITH A VISION

Every Firm Has A Story.

Ours started in a small structural engineering office in Visalia with three principals and a shared vision of providing superior engineering and client service. After many years, Byron Dietrich, one of three founding principals, left to pursue other passions outside of engineering.

We grew, we added ten incredible new principals, and we continued to build a thriving business. We missed Byron, but we are excited to announce that Byron has rejoined TETER and is as committed to our vision as ever.

What Can You Expect?

Byron will be working with our amazing team of over 100 engineers and architects to offer our clients what he does so well.

He will bring his creativity and enthusiasm for structural engineering design and assisting industrial clients. Byron looks forward to assisting our other principals, continuing TETER’s growth, and bridging the firm’s past and future.

TETER’s story has many chapters already and many yet to be written. But we couldn’t be happier that one of the main characters is back to help write the next piece of our legacy.

TETER Makes ENR’s Top 2018 Design Firm List

ENR lists TETER as a California Top Design Firm

Engineering News-Record (ENR) has featured TETER as one of 2018’s “California Top Design Firms” in their May/June magazine. The ENR California Top Design Firms list, ranks the largest U.S.-based design firms, both publicly and privately held, based on design-specific revenue.

TETER Architects and Engineers, the only design firm headquartered in the San Joaquin Valley included on ENR’s list, is honored to be included with prestigious nationally-recognized design firms. Our mission is to “build a better valley”. We strive to help make central California a desirable community to live, work, and play.

TETER Donates $1,000 to College of the Sequoias

$1,000 C.O.S. Architectural Foundation Scholarship

TETER’s Arnoldo Espindola and College of the Sequoia’s Rolando Gonzales present TETER’s $1,000 scholarship to Omar Mangaña, a graduate of the College of Sequoias’ Architectural program.

Mr. Mangaña will use the $1,000 to help pay for his higher education at New School of Architecture in San Diego.

“As a former student of COS’ Architecture program, I was honored and proud to present Omar Mangaña with TETER’s Architectural scholarship. I was happy to see my former instructor, Rolando Gonzalez, pushing and encouraging students to participate in the AIASJ’s annual student design competition. Activities like this provide students with the opportunity to unveil their potential and talents as a designer. As a graduate of COS’ Architecture program, I know Omar will have the skill set and work ethic to further his potential & education. This event reminds students and professionals that design matters.” – Arnoldo Espindola, TETER Job Captain

Arnoldo Espindola and Rolando Gonzales get ready to present the $1,000 TETER scholarship. (Photo credit: AIASJ)

Megan Chang is a Rising Star in Structural Engineering!

2018 Rising Stars in Civil + Structural Engineering

The seventh annual Rising Stars in Civil and Structural Engineering recognizes 26 professionals, 40 years old or younger working in the U.S., who have shown exceptional technical capability, leadership ability, effective teaching or research, or public service benefiting the civil and and structural engineering professions, their employers, project owners, and society. Zweig Group editors selected TETER’s Megan Chang, PE as a 2018 Rising Star in Structural Engineering. Below is a brief excerpt of Ms. Chang’s accomplishments, projects and activities to date.

“Megan Chang, P.E., (age 33) TETER, LLP, Visalia, Calif., was the project manager and structural project engineer for the award-winning Kern County-Bakersfield Hall of Records Renovation project. The Hall of Records, a historic, single-story government building constructed in 1910, suffered severe concrete deterioration, corrosion of reinforcement, and structural defects. Chang worked closely with the materials science and geotechnical engineer to determine the cause of corrosion and deterioration and designed a repair compatible with the historic, carbonated concrete. As project manager and structural project engineer for the Department of Veteran Affairs – New Information Technology and Engineering Building, Chang pioneered the progressive collapse and blast resistive design, a first for the Central California VA Health Care System. She is one of the few engineers in California’s San Joaquin Valley who possess expert knowledge about the new federal requirement, Physical Security Design for VA Facilities. Chang also is the dean of leadership for TETER University, establishing its core curriculum, identifying its vision and priorities, and securing instructors. For the last three years, Chang has taught structural engineering to eighth grade girls at summer STEM camps.” – Civil + Structural ENGINEER Magazine, a Zweig Group Product

Jenn Pike-Owens, TETER’s Chief Operations Officer and Partner, has this to say about Megan Chang and her selection:

“Megan truly exemplifies what it means to be E.P.I.C! Megan is: Exceptional in her relentless pursuit of maintaining the highest professional standards, a consummate and talented Professional, Inspirational to her peers and future generations of engineering design professionals, and Connected to her A+E Team, the community in which she lives and works, and to our clients.”

TETER Sponsors Noche de Oro Masquerade Gala

Noche de Oro event benefits Orosi High School Students

April 20th marked the Cutler-Orosi Kiwanis Club’s inaugural Noche de Oro Masquerade Gala. TETER’s Gold-level sponsorship of this event will help fund job shadowing and internship opportunities for students in Career Academics and/or Pathway Programs at Orosi High School. These programs help students gain hands-on experiences, employment skills, professional networking opportunities, and workforce introductions.

“It was wonderful to be part of the widespread support of this inaugural event – which was also backed by neighboring communities, other school districts, and local businesses. It was great to see so many people concerned about the future of Orosi High School students and wanting to help.” – Robert Thornton

(Left to Right) Alisa Brimhall Gubler, City of Visalia Mayor Warren Gubler, Robert Thornton (TETER Partner).

(Left to Right) Ralph Willamsen (Architect in TETER ‘s Bakersfield office), Robert Thornton (TETER Partner) and Toni Sherman.

(Left to right) Mr. Camaquin (Principal of Palm E.S. in Cutler-Orosi Jt. USD), his guest, Beth Mount (Marketing Production Coordinator at TETER), Robert Thornton, Ralph Williamsen and Toni Sherman.

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