Beyond Blueprints
How LAN Partnered with Edgewater Park Township to Realize a New Police & Court Building
How LAN Partnered with Edgewater Park Township to Realize a New Police & Court Building
For an architecture and engineering firm, achieving success for your clients is about more than designing attractive-looking buildings and spaces. You need to contribute to almost every aspect of a project, from conceptualizing a project’s scope of work to community engagement and long-term planning, identifying and supporting funding opportunities, developing cost estimates, scheduling, bidding, and overseeing construction. This is how LAN’s team partners with our clients, and the results for Edgewater Park Township have been remarkable.
LAN Associates is a full-service architecture and engineering firm that opened its doors in 1965. Operating in five locations across New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, LAN has flourished by working with local communities on public and private projects ranging from educational facilities to municipal buildings, as well as commercial and industrial spaces.
In 2018, LAN Associates opened a new office in Voorhees, New Jersey. Almost immediately, the team began building relationships and taking on major projects. They concentrated their efforts on both LAN’s traditional core markets and other sectors that play to the strengths of the talented architects working out of the LAN’s Southern New Jersey location. Their work paid off and LAN’s Voorhees team more than tripled in size in just a few short years.
LAN Associates’ Southern New Jersey team has already done extensive work in the K-12 educational sector, where they have become the architect of record for several school districts. This has led to a number of major projects, including additions, renovations, outdoor learning spaces, and pre-referendum work for upcoming votes on a variety of major educational facility design and construction initiatives.
In the municipal sector, LAN’s comprehensive approach to architectural design services was a major factor in helping Edgewater Park Township design and fund one of the largest municipal projects in the town’s history, the new Edgewater Park Township Police & Court Building. LAN provided architecture and engineering services for the 17,500-sf new public safety building, which in addition to its primary use, the police department, was carefully designed to serve the local community. The courtrooms will provide a space for legal proceedings while also serving as a gathering space for community events during the evenings, and the training room will be available for community use when not utilized by the police department.
The Police & Court Building will welcome visitors with a modern take on a traditional look that includes a wooden truss canopy that extends into the main lobby. Various types of stone are incorporated throughout the design, complementing the wood, brick, and cast stone elements of the building to create a timeless aesthetic. Additional space will provide room for the police department to grow, including department offices, locker rooms, fitness rooms, sally ports, holding cells, processing, and investigation rooms.
All of this was made possible by LAN working diligently with Township leaders to secure two sources of grant funding. LAN and Environmental Resolutions, Inc., the civil engineer on the project, assisted in obtaining federal Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) rural development grants, providing key funding to advance the project.
“With the challenges of rising construction costs, it’s not enough to know how to design a building; an architect must be a true partner, helping clients get their project across the finish line,” said LAN Assistant Vice President and Architect, Ron Schwenke, who heads up the firm’s Voorhees location. “For example, public projects often are in response to a pressing need, and navigating the acquisition of funding has become a vital skill set to help clients succeed in realizing their construction projects. We look forward to welcoming the Township to their new public safety building.”
On every front, LAN approaches each project with a mindset of, “How can I contribute to help this project succeed?” And in Edgewater Park Township, succeed it did. The project is going out to bid in August of this year, and construction is anticipated to start in the fall of 2024.
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LAN Associates is a full-service engineering, planning, architecture, and surveying firm founded in 1965. We take pride in our ability to address the distinct needs of our large and varying client base.
