Lane Building Seismic Retrofit Wins SEAOSC Structural Engineering Excellence Award
The Structural Engineers Association of Southern California (SEAOSC) honored the Lane Building seismic retrofit project with an Award of Merit in the Retrofit/Alteration category as part of the organization’s 2026 Structural Engineering Excellence (SEE) Awards program. The award was presented during SEAOSC’s SEE Awards ceremony on 13 May 2026 at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia, CA.
The historic Lane Building in Los Angeles, CA, is a twelve-story, nonductile concrete structure originally constructed in the early 1920s. The owner undertook a renovation project to convert the building into a mixed-use property with ground-floor retail and more than 100 residential units. Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH) collaborated with the project team to design seismic strengthening measures that could be integrated with the proposed program while maintaining the building’s historic character.
The Lane Building project required a thoughtful balance between preserving a historic structure and improving its seismic performance.
As the structural engineer of record for the seismic retrofit, SGH developed a structural strengthening design compliant with the City of Los Angeles’s Non-Ductile Concrete Retrofit Program. The design team evaluated both a prescriptive retrofit approach based on ASCE 7 and a performance-based engineering retrofit using ASCE 41-13 nonlinear procedures. Rather than implementing extensive shear walls along the building’s primary facade and deep foundation elements that would have significantly altered the historic structure and increased construction costs, SGH used nonlinear performance-based analyses and soil-structure interaction evaluations to better capture the building’s behavior and optimize the retrofit strategy. The final design integrated new reinforced concrete shear walls, a special reinforced concrete moment frame, selective shotcrete strengthening, and targeted fiber-reinforced polymer confinement of existing members.
“The Lane Building project required a thoughtful balance between preserving a historic structure and improving its seismic performance,” said SGH Managing Principal Kevin O’Connell, the project’s Principal in Charge. “We’re honored to see the project recognized by SEAOSC and proud of the collaboration between the entire project team.”
SGH partnered with architect Omgivning; owner Palace Company, LLC; and contractor Reaume Richardson on the project. SGH Project Consultants Dara Karać and Taylor Walsh joined Kevin at the awards ceremony.
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