A resiliency center with its sights set on Gold
Guest author: Paola Giron-Carson (she/they) is a California Climate Action Corps Fellow with the Sustainability and Resilience Division of the Office of the Administrator, City of Oakland. She is interested in community centered climate resilience and nature-based climate adaptation and has been working hard to make sure their work in community resilience, electrification outreach, and electrification workforce development centers the needs and voices of frontline and underserved communities. Paola lives in Oakland, CA.
Courtesy of the City of Oakland and Shah Kawasaki Architects
The Lincoln Square Community Resilience and Recreation Center, located at Lincoln Square Park, will provide linguistically and culturally appropriate resources and services, and year-round resilience programing to the community on a day-by-day basis, as well as during and after emergency events. The current Lincoln Recreation Center will be expanded to a 22,000 square foot two-story Community Resilience Center with essential improvements, while retaining the existing outdoor space, using environmentally friendly construction methods, and seeking a LEED Gold certification. Highlights include:
The new building will be equipped to support the community in their everyday needs as well as in the face of climate risks that the community may increasingly experience such as extreme heat, flooding atmospheric rivers, wildfire-poor air quality, drought, and food system shocks.
Solar panels and battery storage will allow the facility to have backup power if the center is activated in the event of a power outage or shut off, allowing phones and medical devices to be charged, and medications to be refrigerated.
The building will have an energy efficient HVAC system that will provide air filtration, cooling, and heating. The air filtration system will provide a respite from every day high levels of air pollution in the area which pose health risks to the community and for extreme poor air quality days and the cooling system will equip the building to be activated as a cooling center in an extreme heat event.
The center will act as a central point of communication for the community in its every day information sharing capacity as well as during and after the event of an emergency. It will be prepared with radios, broadband, and community phone charging ports.
The facility will have multipurpose areas to be activated as an overnight shelter if community members are displaced by climate events and pets will be sheltered on-site or at a nearby location. The building will amenities critical for activation as shelter such as a commercial kitchen, food and supply storage areas, showers, laundry, and gender-neutral restrooms. The building will be set up as a supply and resource distribution point and will store water for emergencies.
The outdoor programing spaces will be climate resilient with flexible indoor/outdoor space, who’s importance was highlighted by pandemic best practices, 4,414 square feet of drought-tolerant landscaping, 29 new shade trees and solar-reflective blacktop surfaces to reduce heat, and bio-filtration systems and permeable paving to reduce storm water run-off and risk of flooding.
The facility will participate in climate mitigation efforts through its energy efficient facilities and use of renewable energy, as well as its urban greening elements. The Center’s battery storage capacity will reduce grid reliance during peak hours when non-renewable energy sources are used more instead using the renewable energy stored from the Center’s solar panels. The building will use an energy efficient HVAC system, an induction stove, and will use efficient electrical appliances instead of gas appliances for water heating and laundry.
The drought-tolerant landscaping will advance sustainable water management goals. This greening measure, in addition to new shade trees will contribute to carbon sequestration and cooling and help clean the air of pollutants and refill groundwater. The bio-filtration systems and permeable paving will reduce pollution burden on the watershed.