Civic & Government
Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall HVAC, Controls & Home-Like Improvements
HVAC, BAS, and home-like environment renovations across a working juvenile hall.
Client
LA County Internal Services Department
Location
Sylmar, CA
Service Line
HVAC, JCI Facility Explorer controls, and home-like improvements across the living units — a fourteen-month job turned around in four.
Los Angeles County set out to make its juvenile halls feel less like institutions: softer rooms, better light, living units built around a young person’s recovery instead of just their custody. At Barry J. Nidorf, Athena did both the part behind the walls and the part you can see — new HVAC, new building automation, and the general construction that turned cold living units into home-like ones.
Athena went into Barry Nidorf once a unit was emptied and rebuilt it before the next group came back.
The work was part of the County’s Home-Like program, a court-adjacent transformation of the living units at Barry Nidorf and Central Juvenile Hall carried out under an agreement with the California Department of Justice. Youth were moved between facilities while the work happened: Athena went into Barry Nidorf once a unit was emptied and rebuilt it before the next group came back. (The same effort reached Central Juvenile Hall and Los Padrinos in Downey — both their own stories.)
Fourteen months of work, delivered in four.
Fourteen months of work, delivered in four. With the units empty and real pressure to get youth back into them, Athena ran the job pod by pod — demolition flowing straight into installation, one living unit into the next, instead of finishing each phase across the whole building before starting the next. A schedule originally set at fourteen months closed in about four.
Behind that pace was a full mechanical and controls rebuild. Athena replaced the air handlers and VAV systems across the living units, ran new piping, ductwork, dampers, and electrical, abated the old asbestos pipe insulation, and self-performed the general construction (concrete, steel, doors, louvers) to put it all back together. The controls went onto Johnson Controls Facility Explorer, integrated into the County’s countywide front-end so Barry Nidorf reports in alongside the rest of LA County’s portfolio. And Athena performed the home-like improvements themselves — the repairs and finishes that make a living unit feel more like a home.
When Athena turned the units back over, the young people had somewhere better to come back to, and the County had a building running on the same system as the rest of its facilities.
Client: County of Los Angeles, Internal Services Department (for the Probation Department). Delivery: Job Order Contract. Scope: HVAC replacement across the living units, building automation on Johnson Controls Facility Explorer integrated to the County’s countywide front-end, asbestos abatement, and general construction repairs under the County’s Home-Like program — self-performed by Athena Engineering.
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