Opened in 2013, ARH was the civil design engineer for the new $68 million, 141,650SF, Mercer County Criminal Courthouse. The project involved the demolition of the old jail and parking garage, and construction of a new courthouse building and surface parking lot.
The building and site are LEED Gold certified, with innovative design features including rooftop rainwater capture and re-use within a graywater system, site wide rainwater filtration, storage, and control, solar electric panels, heat island credits, and a zero-irrigation landscape design.
As is the case on most large-scale inner city construction projects, usable land for site infrastructure is a commodity. Using a variety of control structures, ARH was able to maximize efficiency by incorporating a series of bio swales, raised inlets, underground water quality filters and vaults, along with a roof-top rainwater collection tied to underground cisterns for grey-water recycling. Solar covered parking and a zero-irrigation landscape design rounded out this innovative project.
This project was awarded “Distinguished Engineering Award” by the NJ Alliance for Action in 2014 for its innovative civil engineering design, shown below.