C.W. Driver, a San Diego Chapter member, has been awarded a $9.4-million design-build library project in San Diego County. The Alpine Library marks the third design-build project, as well as the third library for which C.W. Driver has been selected as the design-builder by the County of San Diego. Scheduled for completion in spring 2016, the project is designed to target LEED® Gold certification and will be the county’s first zero-net-energy building (ZNE).

"The community has really come together to make the construction of the new Alpine Library a reality," said Rich Freeark, senior vice president with C.W. Driver. "New construction in San Diego has seen a 58 percent increase from 2013, showing increased optimism and strengthening economic stability. As this is C.W. Driver’s third library project within the County of San Diego, we will rely on our strong connections and knowledge in the region to meet all of the client’s goals."

Located near the Alpine Community Center and the Veterans Wall of Honor, the 12,900-sq-ft library provides a flexible space to facilitate community and educational activities for residents of both Alpine and nearby communities. 

Being a rural library, the Alpine Library may also serve as a safety zone during emergencies, making space allocation a particular consideration. This will be a cool zone in the case of a power failure as the facility will have an extensive photovoltaic panel system and also will have the provisions to be powered by an emergency generator. The facility will feature spaces for children, teens and adults including a reading room complete with a fireplace, computer lab, homework center, resource room for flexible programming, automated book check-in and check-out, approximately 700 square feet of space for the Alpine Library Friends Association bookstore and an outdoor patio overlooking the nearby park.

In addition to Freeark, the C.W. Driver project management team members include Andy Feth, project director; and Matt Christensen, project manager.

The Alpine Library joins two other library design-build projects in the San Diego area, Fallbrook Library and Ramona Library, for which C.W. Driver previously partnered with Ferguson Pape Baldwin Architects and Manuel Oncina Architects. In 2011, the Fallbrook Library was expanded to almost twice the size of the original building and certified as LEED® Silver with the Ramona Library brought to four-times the size of its original facility and certified as LEED® Gold.