Fridley Public Works Facility
Oertel Architects · Fridley, MN
Overview
The new public works facility provides city municipal staff with a new home to coordinate critical infrastructure maintenance activities for the community and enhance the health and well-being of the department's first- responder staff. The facility is designed around both people and the equipment people use to service the community infrastructure. The building’s architecture provides a critical anchor within a larger civic campus project to create a community service amenity.
The new public works facility provides city municipal staff with a new home to coordinate critical infrastructure maintenance activities for the community and enhance the health and well-being of the department's first- responder staff. Public Works as an operation, provides space designed around people and large pieces of equipment that as residents we don’t often see doing work in our communities, but depend on daily whether we know it or not. These facilities often don’t get the design attention of other municipal first responders like police and fire departments. A project imperative for staff and elected officials was that their public works facility provide state- of-the-art equipment storage and maintenance spaces, as well as staff amenities and personal workspaces, to match the level of dedication and importance of public works staff to their community. The result was an ambitious project of a larger civic campus and public space project, of which public works is a critical anchor and component in the greater creation of this community service amenity. The project converted the site of a former ice arena, fire department training area, and the original, outdated, and smaller public works facility into this campus of community function.
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