Leach Mounce Architects

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Leach Mounce You’re In Safe Hands With proven expertise in the public safety architecture market, LMA provides a full range of services to architects designing law enforcement facilities, communications centers, detention facilities, security systems, and a myriad of other public safety structures.

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2 Architecture Leaders Today

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In Safe Hands

Leach Mounce Architects has proven expertise in the public safety architecture market, serving a variety of clients across North America

by Jane Caffrey

Leach Mounce Architects has been a safe choice for clients for more than a quarter of a century, with proven expertise in public safety architecture. While serving as an expert consultant to public agencies since 1962, in the past two decades the southern California company has also provided a full range of services to architects designing law enforcement facilities, communications centers, detention facilities, security systems, and a myriad of other public safety structures.

“Safety, high security, and technology are the types of work we’ve been doing for a long time,” said Howard Leach, President of Leach Mounce Architects. “We’re on the cutting edge of it. We’ve developed a reputation, and we are specialized at doing it well.”

The company has worked on fire stations, communications centers, crime laboratories, law enforcement facilities, libraries, civic centers, and detention facilities. With a strong methodology for performing needs assessments during the planning phase, Leach Mounce has completed more than 80 assessments for city and county governments in the last 20 years, as well as 26 projects for prominent firms across North America.

“Since we negotiated the purchase of the Wendell Mounce firm, in 1990, we’ve become more and more specialized,” Leach said. “We have a good methodology for doing a needs

TOP: San Mateo Police Headquarters, San Mateo, Calif.

Approach to front entry. Photo

by Steve Whittaker, Whittaker Photography.

BOTTOM: Sacramento 911 Center/ DOC/Training Facility, Sacramento, Calif. Facility completed January 2006. Photo by Steve Whittaker, Whittaker Photography (www. whittpho.com).

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TOP LEFT & RIGHT: California State University Northridge Parking Garage. Photos courtesy of Leach Mounce Architects.

BOTTOM LEFT & RIGHT: Pierce County/City of Tacoma Wash.

EOC. Photo by Denny Sternstein, Sternstein Photography.

assessment, which is valuable for starting a project.”

While the firm has completed projects nationally, several of the most successful structures stand in California, such as the San Mateo Police Headquarters. A $50 million project, the 56,000 sq. ft. structure is LEED Silver certified. Completed in 2009, it boasts a 43,000 sq. ft. subterranean parking garage that holds 105 cars, as well as an indoor shooting range.

The complex also contains a holding facility, regional dispatch center and a multi-use emergency operations center and training/ community room.

Leach Mounce recently completed the needs assessment, design and construction administration for the Santa Clara Emergency Dispatch Center, which consisted of 5,500 sq. ft. and 10 operator stations. In La Mesa, the Post Office, Library and Police Headquarters are a 60,400 square-foot complex valued at $27.8 million, and part of a master plan that Leach Mounce did for the city.

“We’re really getting into multi-function centers, as well as the combination of dispatch and real time crime centers,” said Leach. “We will be doing more with live camera operating facilities. It’s all in one spot, so it’s a fully integrated type of center with electronic connections to multiple public and private agencies.”

The company additionally specializes in threat analysis, led by Leach, who was trained by the Institute of Security Design in Washington D.C. in Designing Facilities to Survive Terrorist Attack. Leach Mounce provided Threat Analysis for the Communications Center for Los Angeles International Airport, the Sacramento 911 Center and the City of Rochester/ Monroe County Communications Center in New York, recommending countermeasures for facility hardening and system protection.

“We have several departments and agencies that we’re dealing with,” said Leach. “The main thing is to provide the services that the client needs and especially during these difficult financial times, provide more for less. People skills are extremely important. We address their concerns, needs, and wants, then we add in our point of view and experience, and that’s how we get a great project.”

Now with proven expertise in public safety architecture, Leach Mounce anticipates expanding to new markets in upcoming years, such as becoming more involved in library and court design. Yet the core business model will remain: serving as a preeminent force in the national market for public safety architecture. ALT 4 Architecture Leaders Today

Brandow & johnston, inc.

After 65 years, Brandow & Johnston, Inc. is proud to be identified among those who built the Los Angeles we see today; that includes the first all welded steel office building and the city’s first major high-rise. Since then, B&J have successfully completed over 20,000 projects; 200 using Revit/BIM (Building Information Modeling). B&J have worked with Leach Mounce on projects such as the Parking Structure & Public Services Building for CSU Northridge, La Mesa Post Office & Library, La Mesa Police Facility, Chino Police Department, and City of Stockton 911 Call Center. Brandow & Johnston now offer civil engineering as of 2007. B&J most recently completed civil engineering for the new $105 million Ronald Tutor Campus Center at the University of Southern California.

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