This project consists of a two-story 5,500 square foot building. The first floor includes a public comfort station that replaced an existing facility at this location. The Second floor houses a new Beach Patrol Facility.

The comfort station includes Men’s & Women’s public restrooms, four unisex changing rooms, two unisex/family restrooms, one with an adult changing station, an information office, and a medical room with its own restroom and roll-in shower for medical emergencies.

The Beach Patrol Station includes a conference room, a break area, a meeting room, dedicated restrooms with lockers for lifeguards, and the patrol commander’s office. A deck extends out to the East of the building overlooking the boardwalk, and two stairs come off either side of the deck down to the ground level. There is a mid-level landing over the ATV garages to house kayaks. The two ATV garages exit onto the Boardwalk.

DBF performed Architectural services, including Programming, Existing Building Documentation, schematic design, planning commission presentations, Design Development, Construction Documents, & specifications, Bidding Services, and CA services during construction. The city also hired EDiS as an owner’s representative to provide administrative services during construction.

We worked with the city, the Beach Patrol, and the Police Department to identify the project goals, as well as the end users’ needs and expectations. From there, we developed schematic options that would fit within the existing site constraints.

Part of the design process involved working with the planning commission and the community to develop a balanced design that did not favor one side of the street over the other, preserving the same viewshed for each of the hotels on Baltimore Avenue.

Additionally, the design involved working with DNREC to elevate the construction above the floodplain while maintaining ADA access to the public facility via ramps on the north and south sides of the site.

Finally, during construction, we encountered several hurdles with the existing site conditions, including unforeseen foreign debris buried on-site, which led to the driving of significantly more piles than originally intended. This required daily evaluation of pile-driving reports and team meetings during this time to keep the project moving apace and to get the piles driven before the City’s summer deadline.