OREGON CITY, Ore.—After a long building process, the Clackamas County Courthouse is slating May 19 for its official opening. The new beacon of justice was built by Clackamas Progress Partners, a consortium that includes PCL Construction Services Inc., Fengate Asset Management, and other collaborators. This project is Oregon’s first courthouse delivered through a Public-Private Partnership (P3) mode.
DLR Group provided planning, design, lighting, environmental acoustics, and interiors services. Its design for the new venue interlaces history, regionality, and modern workplace and civic life. The building’s placement, interior composition, and civic plaza all guide the way visitors seek out services by forging a solid connection to the county campus, adjacent services, and distinct identification of the building’s presence on the site.
The brand-new six-story courthouse will greet visitors and staff with straightforward wayfinding, making sure that anyone attending court or seeking county services understands exactly where to go. The spacious two-story public lobby area offers clear sightlines to all public functions on each floor, fashioning a stable and secure environment while also being easily accessible. The exterior central plaza is visible from all public circulation zones as a shared reference point on each floor.
While its common for courthouses to prioritize their public engagement spaces, this design aims to make certain that staff who work in the building regularly equally benefit from the environment. DLR Group planned spaces and selected materials to reduce stress and nurture inter-staff connections, and also partnered with departments to simplify the judicial process. Within a courthouse, workplace areas extend to non-traditional spaces. For example, clerks, sheriff’s staff, attorneys, interpreters, and judges all have working areas and offices within the actual courtrooms. Every courtroom benefits from direct or borrowed daylight, and simple planes of wood imbue the spaces with serene dignity.
The P3 project won IJ Global Awards’ “Social Infrastructure Deal of the Year.” As the committee states, “The project achieves excellence in social infrastructure as it presents an innovative approach to address a facility in urgent need of replacement, increasing community needs, and sustainability targets . . . This project also supports the County’s goal to be carbon neutral in operations by 2050, and complies with the Oregon Green Energy Technology program, which will include technology to produce at least 25% of the building’s energy onsite.”
The new courthouse includes 14 courtrooms with flex space to build out two additional courtrooms. A private circulation system throughout the building enables access to all courtrooms and support spaces without crossing public circulation zones, boosting space-sharing, long-term flexibility and security. The new courthouse integrates seamlessly into the existing government campus while establishing it as the new focal point for the campus.
Located in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, Clackamas County is home to nearly half a million people, reflecting substantial growth from when the existing county courthouse was constructed back in 1936.
