County Public Health Lab Celebrates Grand Opening | News

The County’s new state-of-the-art Public Health Lab officially opened its doors after a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the County Operations Center (COC) in Kearny Mesa on Thursday.

The two-story facility measures 52,000 square feet, three times larger than the old, cramped and outdated building on Rosecrans.  Once a shopping center and dating back to 1965, it hadn’t been designed to house a lab. The structure was closed due to its aging infrastructure.

The new facility creates space for nearly 90 employees and contractors who will test for infectious diseases like COVID-19, Respiratory Syncytial Virus known as RSV, flu and other diseases.

They will also test for food and water safety, animal rabies and dangerous pathogens like anthrax.

In addition to these services, the expanded lab will conduct whole genome sequencing and test for tuberculosis.

County microbiologists and other staff worked with builders to make sure the lab would meet their needs, and state and federal guidelines.

As a result, the new building provides a safe, secure facility with improved workflows, flexible spaces for large pieces of equipment, storage and the ability to scale up for any future public health emergencies.

The structure includes a:

• Biosafety-Level (BSL) 3 Bioterrorism Lab
• Tuberculosis (TB) Prep and BSL-3 TB Labs
• Genome Sequencing Lab
• Training Lab
• Rabies Lab
• Surge Lab to scale up response

The lab expects to conduct about 50,000 tests annually.

The new facility will also serve as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Laboratory Response Network Lab for San Diego and Imperial Counties.

Path to Construction  

A survey on space needs at the COC campus led the way to construction.

Recognizing that COVID-19 changed the way some people work, the survey looked at teleworking schedules, hoteling spaces and future growth of the existing campus departments. Results showed staff could be consolidated into three of the four existing office buildings.

With careful planning and some remodeling work, 12 departments consolidated into three office buildings.

The reshuffling allowed 570 Public Health Services employees who were formerly at the Rosecrans building to move into the vacant four-story, 150,000-square-foot building on campus.

In avoiding the $150 million cost of building a replacement for the health services complex, the County was able to construct the public health lab and a six-level parking garage nearby.

The $32.5 million parking structure was completed last year, adding 725 spaces and 237 electric vehicle charging stations. Roof solar panels were installed to offset part of the lab’s energy use.

The lab’s groundbreaking took place in October 2023. The facility reflects the architecture on the rest of the campus but differs slightly to differentiate it from the other buildings. Like each building, the site features its own public art and artifact displays.

Sustainability

The lab was built to platinum LEED standards which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Standard Design. The structure is expected to become the County’s 71^st LEED certified building.

The building features solar panels, saves energy with natural lighting, conserves indoor and outdoor water use, and saved landfill space through the recycling of demolition and construction waste materials.

Construction also reduced embodied carbon by 23% and refers to emissions made in the manufacture, transport, use and disposal of building materials. In this case, the building used low-carbon concrete, steel and metal panels.

Throughout the region, the County has achieved several sustainability milestones:

• 11 Zero Net Energy buildings that produce more energy than the building consumes in a year
• 16 MW of solar energy installed at County sites – providing 20% of the County’s total electricity demand
• 47% reduction in greenhouse gases from County operations since 2010

County Operations Center Master Plan 

The lab and the parking structure mark the sixth phase of the COC Campus Master Plan. In 2008, the Board of Supervisors authorized the plan to rebuild and centralize a wide range of County operations in one place – the 47-acre campus in Kearny Mesa.

Since that time, campus buildings that had outlived their useful lives were destroyed and replaced with new, modernized and environmentally friendly facilities.

See below for the list of major campus construction projects:

• Central Plant
• Four office buildings
• Three parking structures
• Campus Center/Public Hearing Chambers
• Emergency Operations Center
• Medical Examiner’s Office
• Registrar of Voters building
• Fleet Facility
• Sheriff’s Technology Information Center
• Sheriff’s Crime Lab
• Public Health Lab