Selected to design this building within Pasadena's revered Civic Center, this design and its presentation successfully navigated the City's  tortuous Commissions system and was fully entitled/permitted to build, just at the moment when utility de-regulation swept the nation.  The Department henceforth elected to lease residual space in commercial office buildings for the decades following.

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While deferential of the Civic Center's Mediterranean Revival context and the material quality of its civic buildings, (employing such details as steel-framed windows and cast stone trim), the building also employed a locally pioneering statement of sustainability with an all glass and steel north facade, opening up the building to both glare-free daylighting and dramatic views of the proximate San Gabriel foothills.