SANTA CLARA CO. TO GET $75 MILLION CRIME LAB BY 2008

SAN JOSE (BCN)

A state-of-the-art $75.7 million crime lab spanning five floors and more than 90,000 square feet is scheduled to adorn downtown San Jose in a little more than two years.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors awarded a $49.5 million contract for the crime lab to Redwood City-based S.J. Amoroso Construction Co. at its meeting this week.

The county hopes to fund the bulk of the project, more than $66.6 million, with bond proceeds, which it intends to seek sometime in February, the county's Capital Programs Manager Ken Rado said today.

The remainder has been secured through the Santa Clara County district attorney's Criminal Justice Facilities Fund, which will pitch in about $7.5 million, and a state grant awarded a few years ago in the amount of about $1.5 million.

"We do have a crime lab today, but it doesn't resemble anything like the one we're building," Rado said.

The current lab is "located in the basement of a building, with cramped quarters and is nowhere near the size, capacity or sophistication of the new crime lab," Rado said. "Basically it's outdated."

The county built the old crime lab about 30 years ago.

"You can imagine the technology installed then," laboratory Director Benny Delre said today.

Because of the old lab's confined workspace - about 30,000 square feet - three to four staff members often have to share one work area, Delre said. In addition, some laboratory personnel work at two other county locations.

"The key thing is not the equipment or the building, but it's the personnel," Delre said. "We want to allow them the space they need to do their job."

The new lab comes with some new features, including low-copy DNA and Mitochondrial DNA testing. Low-copy DNA testing allows laboratories to examine smaller amounts of DNA than conventional tests. Mitochondrial DNA analysis enables testing of DNA samples that are old, degraded or compromised in some way and cannot be examined with standard DNA testing methods. Neither low-copy DNA nor Mitochondrial DNA testing is available at the old lab, Delre said.

He added that these new DNA testing methods are critical to providing investigators and prosecutors with valuable information and could help solve "cold cases."

The new crime lab, which will be located in the intersection of West Hedding Street and Guadalupe Parkway, will house about 60 to 65 forensic investigators working for the county. In addition, Delre said the new lab may be able to serve other law enforcement agencies that wish to assign personnel to top-of-the-line computer forensic labs.

Planning for the lab began about four years ago, and county supervisors approved funds for its design in 2002. Rado said the architects placed emphasis on making the new building environmentally sound, with energy and water saving technologies.

The design adheres to the U.S. Green Building Council's guidelines of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, a voluntary national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.

The new lab is meant to remain top-notch at least until 2020, Delre said.

"With that in mind, we want to be able to have space to house the staff and deal with the heavy case load that is going to build up until 2020," he said.

S.J. Amoroso became the sole bidder on the contract after a lower bid by Big-D Pacific Builders of about $47.6 million came in late and was disregarded.

Construction is slated to begin sometime in March and finish by March 2008. It remains undecided what will happen to the old crime lab once the new one takes its place.

Rado said a drawing of the future lab reveals a gray- or neutral-colored masonry and glass-window exterior stretching from the ground upward and covering four floors and a penthouse.

"It's going to be a sophisticated but understated-looking building," he said. "I think it will benefit the county greatly by having better investigative facilities and capabilities."