Monday, May 4, 2026
Campus breaks new ground in county services, development process
Photo by Brady Architectural Photography
The 47-acre County Operations Center campus in Kearny Mesa has been developed over nearly 20 years through a public-private partnership.
The 47-acre County Operations Center campus in Kearny Mesa has been developed over nearly 20 years through a public-private partnership.
When Matt Semic strolls the grounds of the 47-acre County Operations Center in Kearny Mesa, he doesn't just see a collection of office buildings.
He sees a vibrant, living, employee-centric campus - the fruition of a novel development approach launched nearly 20 years ago to update and consolidate San Diego County's scattered government facilities.
"It's a pleasant place to go to," said Semic, president of Latitude 33 Planning & Engineering and a member of the development team. "I see it in the employees' faces. The number of people who appreciate the facilities, how happy they are, and the pride they have to call it their office."
Vincent Mudd, a partner with the project's architecture firm, Steinberg Hart, sees it, too, as does every visitor to the carefully crafted property.
The County Operations Center consists of 15 structures, including the County Registrar of Voters, the Sheriff's Regional Crime Lab, the Public Health Lab, the Sheriff's Technology & Information Center, and the Medical Examiner & Forensic Center.
Planning for the campus began in the early 2000s, when San Diego County officials were looking to improve government efficiency and save taxpayer money while updating the county's antiquated infrastructure.
The county hired Lowe as the master developer and brought on Project Management Advisors (PMA) to represent its interests in the public-private partnership. RJC Architects (now part of Steinberg Hart) and Latitude 33 were added to the development team.
From the start, the county and the companies worked together using the unique-at-the-time business model called "design-build."
Instead of hiring a design team first and then finding a contractor to execute the plans, the county assembled all members of the development team at the same time to work in collaboration with one another.
"It's a pretty common delivery model now, but 17 years ago that was not the case," Semic said. "Design-build was starting to exist, but I'm sure it was a bit of a leap of faith for the county to execute it this way."
Ron Roberts, a County Supervisor at the time, was a classically trained architect and understood the benefits of a design-build approach. He was an advantageous asset to the design team, Mudd said.
With the county, PMA, Lowe, Latitude 33 and RJC Architects/Steinberg Hart working in lockstep from the start, the group was able to optimize the building schedule, keeping the project's budget mostly fixed.
The original plan was to modernize a series of 1960s-era buildings and optimize the county-owned land in Kearny Mesa. It morphed into a larger opportunity to consolidate several facilities throughout San Diego while expanding the county's Kearny Mesa footprint.
Steinberg Hart and RJC Architects designed nine of the properties while Latitude 33 was the engineering firm for all but one of the buildings. Numerous builders constructed the facilities, including Suffolk-Roel Construction Co., McCarthy Building, DPR Constrution, and BNBuilders.
Sustainability became an emphasis and was integrated into each building to enhance their durability, reduce negative environmental impacts, enhance walkability, improve indoor air quality, and reduce operating costs.
"This was very much ahead of its time in terms of delivery and attaining LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] certifications," Semic said.
The Public Health Lab achieved the highest level of sustainability available - LEED Platinum - while also reducing embodied carbon by 23 percent.
The development team made artwork a priority as well, knowing it's a component of attracting a successful workforce.
"When you are considerate about colors, artwork, and you integrate all that into your design, your buildings will not only perform better and operate at less cost, but your workforce will want to work in them," Mudd said. "And that's something the county stuck with on every one of their buildings."
The $73 million, 84,000-square-foot Medical Examiner & Forensic Center was the first building completed when it opened in the fourth quarter of 2009.
In late 2013, the County Registrar of Voters office was moved from its previous home on Ruffin Road to a 118,000-square-foot facility on the Kearny Mesa campus - a move Semic said wasn't originally planned but happened organically as officials realized they had the room.
The final building of the campus, delivered last summer, was the 52,000-square-foot Public Health Lab. The state-of-the-art facility features a biosafety-level 3 (BSL-3) bioterrorism lab that can test for COVID-19, RSV, other viral diseases as well as dangerous pathogens, like anthrax.
The $93 million, two-story building is three times the size of the outdated health lab on Rosecrans, which was once a shopping center built in 1965.
The new lab was being planned before the COVID-19 pandemic, which only magnified its importance.
"There was a commitment to make sure that San Diego had the highest performing health lab to address these types of potentially game-changing events in the future," Mudd said. "It puts San Diego in a position where we are better prepared to be proactive if we have another mass medical emergency in our county."
Not long before the pandemic, the county confronted a hepatitis outbreak, something the new public health lab will be able to address.
"It's the highest quality medical lab in San Diego and even competes against some of the best private sector labs," Mudd said. "And it honors the workers and the scientists in the health care industry."
When COVID-19 struck in March 2020, the development team was wrapping up construction of the Sheriff's Technology and Information Center, which became ground zero for the county's daily pandemic briefings in the early days of the pandemic.
In addition to the buildings, the County Operations Center features significant open space and interconnected walking pathways. The campus was design to promote healthy living even before the county launched its "Live Well San Diego" programming.
"What I'm most proud of is, and I've been walking this for 17 years, is it's a wellness campus," Latitude 33's Semic said.
Marko Medved, director of San Diego County's Department of General Services and a key member of the development team, agreed.
"Recent improvements to our County Operations Campus imbue the ideals of good planning, excellence in design, forward-leaning sustainability, and highly efficient and functional spaces to serve our community," he said.
With time to reflect on the project, Semic calls it a "home run." He is very appreciative of the nearly two-decade-long journey.
"I think it's pretty rare to have something built over this duration and have it look fairly consistent and with modern architecture," he said.
The massive project also helped change Latitude 33, which previously was focused on residential development. The firm was hit hard by the housing crash, causing company officials to do some soul-searching, at which point they realized they needed to diversify.
Semic, who was brought on at the start of the County Operations Center project, helped usher in a new era.
"It [the project] reinvented Latitude 33 at a time it needed to be reinvented," he said, noting the firm's founders had already built a strong brand. "This project was the catalyst to reevaluate our business model."
The project also ushered in a new era of quality service provided by the county - done in a more efficient, cost-effective manner.
"[The campus] was built to be a government campus that was built to private sector design standards," Mudd said.
It's something any visitor to the campus can see.
He sees a vibrant, living, employee-centric campus - the fruition of a novel development approach launched nearly 20 years ago to update and consolidate San Diego County's scattered government facilities.
"It's a pleasant place to go to," said Semic, president of Latitude 33 Planning & Engineering and a member of the development team. "I see it in the employees' faces. The number of people who appreciate the facilities, how happy they are, and the pride they have to call it their office."
Vincent Mudd, a partner with the project's architecture firm, Steinberg Hart, sees it, too, as does every visitor to the carefully crafted property.
The County Operations Center consists of 15 structures, including the County Registrar of Voters, the Sheriff's Regional Crime Lab, the Public Health Lab, the Sheriff's Technology & Information Center, and the Medical Examiner & Forensic Center.
Planning for the campus began in the early 2000s, when San Diego County officials were looking to improve government efficiency and save taxpayer money while updating the county's antiquated infrastructure.
The county hired Lowe as the master developer and brought on Project Management Advisors (PMA) to represent its interests in the public-private partnership. RJC Architects (now part of Steinberg Hart) and Latitude 33 were added to the development team.
From the start, the county and the companies worked together using the unique-at-the-time business model called "design-build."
Instead of hiring a design team first and then finding a contractor to execute the plans, the county assembled all members of the development team at the same time to work in collaboration with one another.
"It's a pretty common delivery model now, but 17 years ago that was not the case," Semic said. "Design-build was starting to exist, but I'm sure it was a bit of a leap of faith for the county to execute it this way."
Ron Roberts, a County Supervisor at the time, was a classically trained architect and understood the benefits of a design-build approach. He was an advantageous asset to the design team, Mudd said.
With the county, PMA, Lowe, Latitude 33 and RJC Architects/Steinberg Hart working in lockstep from the start, the group was able to optimize the building schedule, keeping the project's budget mostly fixed.
The original plan was to modernize a series of 1960s-era buildings and optimize the county-owned land in Kearny Mesa. It morphed into a larger opportunity to consolidate several facilities throughout San Diego while expanding the county's Kearny Mesa footprint.
Steinberg Hart and RJC Architects designed nine of the properties while Latitude 33 was the engineering firm for all but one of the buildings. Numerous builders constructed the facilities, including Suffolk-Roel Construction Co., McCarthy Building, DPR Constrution, and BNBuilders.
Sustainability became an emphasis and was integrated into each building to enhance their durability, reduce negative environmental impacts, enhance walkability, improve indoor air quality, and reduce operating costs.
"This was very much ahead of its time in terms of delivery and attaining LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] certifications," Semic said.
The Public Health Lab achieved the highest level of sustainability available - LEED Platinum - while also reducing embodied carbon by 23 percent.
The development team made artwork a priority as well, knowing it's a component of attracting a successful workforce.
"When you are considerate about colors, artwork, and you integrate all that into your design, your buildings will not only perform better and operate at less cost, but your workforce will want to work in them," Mudd said. "And that's something the county stuck with on every one of their buildings."
The $73 million, 84,000-square-foot Medical Examiner & Forensic Center was the first building completed when it opened in the fourth quarter of 2009.
In late 2013, the County Registrar of Voters office was moved from its previous home on Ruffin Road to a 118,000-square-foot facility on the Kearny Mesa campus - a move Semic said wasn't originally planned but happened organically as officials realized they had the room.
The final building of the campus, delivered last summer, was the 52,000-square-foot Public Health Lab. The state-of-the-art facility features a biosafety-level 3 (BSL-3) bioterrorism lab that can test for COVID-19, RSV, other viral diseases as well as dangerous pathogens, like anthrax.
The $93 million, two-story building is three times the size of the outdated health lab on Rosecrans, which was once a shopping center built in 1965.
The new lab was being planned before the COVID-19 pandemic, which only magnified its importance.
"There was a commitment to make sure that San Diego had the highest performing health lab to address these types of potentially game-changing events in the future," Mudd said. "It puts San Diego in a position where we are better prepared to be proactive if we have another mass medical emergency in our county."
Not long before the pandemic, the county confronted a hepatitis outbreak, something the new public health lab will be able to address.
"It's the highest quality medical lab in San Diego and even competes against some of the best private sector labs," Mudd said. "And it honors the workers and the scientists in the health care industry."
When COVID-19 struck in March 2020, the development team was wrapping up construction of the Sheriff's Technology and Information Center, which became ground zero for the county's daily pandemic briefings in the early days of the pandemic.
In addition to the buildings, the County Operations Center features significant open space and interconnected walking pathways. The campus was design to promote healthy living even before the county launched its "Live Well San Diego" programming.
"What I'm most proud of is, and I've been walking this for 17 years, is it's a wellness campus," Latitude 33's Semic said.
Marko Medved, director of San Diego County's Department of General Services and a key member of the development team, agreed.
"Recent improvements to our County Operations Campus imbue the ideals of good planning, excellence in design, forward-leaning sustainability, and highly efficient and functional spaces to serve our community," he said.
With time to reflect on the project, Semic calls it a "home run." He is very appreciative of the nearly two-decade-long journey.
"I think it's pretty rare to have something built over this duration and have it look fairly consistent and with modern architecture," he said.
The massive project also helped change Latitude 33, which previously was focused on residential development. The firm was hit hard by the housing crash, causing company officials to do some soul-searching, at which point they realized they needed to diversify.
Semic, who was brought on at the start of the County Operations Center project, helped usher in a new era.
"It [the project] reinvented Latitude 33 at a time it needed to be reinvented," he said, noting the firm's founders had already built a strong brand. "This project was the catalyst to reevaluate our business model."
The project also ushered in a new era of quality service provided by the county - done in a more efficient, cost-effective manner.
"[The campus] was built to be a government campus that was built to private sector design standards," Mudd said.
It's something any visitor to the campus can see.
