Celebrating Our First Year as COAR Design Group
Last year we entered a new chapter as a firm as we rebranded from Jeff Katz Architecture (JKA) to COAR Design Group. As our firm grew over 30 years, our work continued to expand with new project types across the state, including everything from Public Safety Facilities to Parks, Libraries, Animal Shelters, Recreation Centers, and beyond. While we continue to grow, a common thread connects every project we work on and clients we work with: community. That’s why we became COAR: a combination of “Community Architects.”
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This year, we added eight new members to our team! Welcome Joel, Jenny, Meghan, Laura, Krt, Roseanna, Jean, & Jovan! We moved to a new San Diego Office, and we can’t wait to host you soon. We kicked off, completed, and continued work on over 20 projects, including Pleasanton Fire Station No. 3, Loma Verde Recreation Center, OC Zoo Large Mammal Habitat, and the Newport Beach Junior Lifeguard building. We also brought home several awards, including the ENR Best of the Best Award for POLB Fire Station No. 15. Additionally, our Design Principal, Christie Jewett was honored as one of San Diego’s Top 50 Women of Influence in Architecture & Design by San Diego Business Journal.
In our second year as COAR, we are excited to continue working on projects that support and enhance their communities. Let’s take a closer look at some of the projects that will be progressing throughout 2023:
CITY OF SANTA ROSA, CA
SANTA ROSA FIRE STATION NO. 5
Jeff Katz, President: “Since we opened our office in Santa Rosa in 2020, we’ve been looking for opportunities to work on projects in the community, so we’re really excited to be part of the design-build team for Santa Rosa Fire Station 5 for the City of Santa Rosa.”
Christie Jewett, Design Principal: “The existing Fire Station 5 burned down during the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa, so this project is part of the resiliency and relocation efforts to replace that. We’re very excited because our COAR Northern California office is located in Santa Rosa, so it’s really exciting to be working on a project so close to home. The goal is always to create the most functional fire station possible so that fire personnel can not only efficiently do their job and provide service to their community, but we want to create a safe for all the personnel to live and work. We also want to make sure that the exterior of the building fits well in the area but also stands out as a civic structure, and we also wanted to make sure that it was durable and designed to last fifty plus years.”
Katz: “The community has been looking to have the station replaced since the fires, and as the community has redeveloped and come back to life, the importance of this station in that community – the Fountain Grove community – is just really critical. And we know how important this project is to the residents who live there, but it also just speaks to the resiliency of the City of Santa Rosa in general as they rebuild from the devastation of the fires.”
CITY OF DELANO, CA
LARRY ITLIONG UNITY PARK & AQUATIC CENTER
Matt Kingdon, Principal: “The Delano Project is a 13.3-million-dollar community aquatics center and park for the City of Delano that we’ve actually been working on since 2018; we’re really excited that it is in construction now. The official name is the Larry Itliong Unity Park. Larry Itliong was a community advocate for farm workers and labor rights, so we’re really excited to commemorate the efforts that he’s put in and his role in the community.”
Ryan Walker, Project Manager: “We looked around at the community and saw a lot of colorful buildings, and we wanted to kind of play off of that a bit. We also have quite a few custom design elements throughout – benches, large canopies, and a few others, signage and interesting features that are also colorful.”
Kingdon: “The aquatics center is actually going to be the first community pool in the City of Delano, so we’re really excited to have this new facility for the youth of the community, and people of all ages, to use. More importantly, it is going to create an opportunity to teach kids how to swim, teach water safety, and make sure we have a safer community overall.”
Walker: “At the front of the park we’ve got a lot of hardscape with tree wells, and it’s going to be acting as a farmer’s market on the weekends. Hopefully, it’s just super busy, day in and day out.”
CITY OF SAN DIEGO, CA
SAN DIEGO HUMANE SOCIETY ADOPTIONS CENTER
Haley Baquian, Job Captain: “The project we’re working on with the San Diego Society is a remodel of their adoptions facility, so it’s a complete rework of their existing building to create improved housing for the animals, improve the efficiency of their staff and volunteer operations so that they can better serve the animals that they are housing, and to improve the guest operations and the way that guests can interact and hopefully adopt animals.”
Baquian: “This project is really unique in that it serves the community of both people and animals, so we’re really hopeful that throughout this project, we’ll create a place for animals who were maybe not in a great situation previously, to come and have a temporary home that’s safe, healthy, and happy.”
Baquian: “We really wanted to create a facility that kind of sets the standard and pushes the boundaries on what shelter design has been in the past so that we don’t get stagnant and that we can continue progressing what shelter design looks like. Especially right now when shelters are so full, it’s really important that we prioritize that guest experience and those interactions so that we can reduce the time in shelters for animals.”
CHEERS TO ANOTHER YEAR!
Jeff Katz: “As I look back on all the years that I’ve had this business, it really is amazing the transformation that has taken place in the last year. The team that we’ve assembled, the comradery that this group exhibits, the way that we have brought two offices together and allowed our staff to really grow as one – it’s heartwarming. And as we moved into a new office in San Diego, and I think back on the growth that we’ve seen in the last couple years, it just brings me a lot of joy and excitement about how this transition has gone, and how excited I am to see where it is going to go moving forward.”
In our first year as COAR, we solidified what “COAR” means to our internal team. We focused on strengthening our internal relationships, team building, and cultivating our company culture. In our next chapter, we’re focusing on increasing our outward impact. From supporting people and animals through our work with San Diego Humane Society to helping bring the first Community Pool to the City of Delano, we’re excited to continue developing our role in the community.
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