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Orange County / Anaheim
Downtown Anaheim Telecenter - This site is being developed by the City of Anaheim with funding from the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Anaheim Redevelopment Agency and is located in the downtown Anaheim redevelopment area. It consists of three floors of the Kraemer Building, a seven floor building constructed in 1924. The center itself comprises 6,400 square feet, and includes an entry level and mezzanine. In the near future, the developer plans to expand telework facilities to one floor of the building's tower. The entire facility encompasses 40,000 square feet, all of which are eventually planned for telecommuting and related uses.
This site is notable for the grace of its design. Recently renovated, the interior of the building has been restored to the original fresco, marble and woodwork. Overall, the center has more than twenty workstations on both floors. Because the computers provided for the workstations are linked by a local area network, there are no user-designated workstations. This allows greater flexibility for users, who can determine where they work within the center. This also serves to provide greater revenue for the center; workstations can be rented for use by drop-in users who are non-telecommuters.
The entry level houses the reception area, one conference room, a lounge area, the computer network manager's office, and nine offices, two of which are multi-user, the rest of which are private. Behind the reception desk is a closed room with fax machine and copiers. The receptionist provides copying and faxing services.
The mezzanine level includes a lounge area, four cubicle workstations, seven small private offices with exterior windows, and two large offices. On the mezzanine is a small kitchen/break room and a conference room with video-conferencing capability. The kitchen has two vending machines, a coffee maker, water cooler, and microwave.
The developer plans to incorporate distance learning and computer classes as part of the multi-use component of the center. There are plans to remodel the fourth floor of the building to accommodate those two functions.
It is the experience of the site administrator that smaller, private or semi-private offices are preferred by users over cubicle workstations. It seems that more people prefer smaller shared or private offices over large areas with partitions. After including the cost of constructing modular workstations, it is the opinion of the site administrator that there is greater cost than benefit in purchasing workstation cubicles to furnish a larger open area.
Co-sponsorship for this center has been provided by several parties. The owner of the building is providing the salary for the on-site local area network manager. Video-conferencing equipment was donated by Office Telephone Management; PictureTel has donated the use of its equipment, and the telephone system and voice mail was donated through JPW Telecon and Active Voice, respectively.
The configuration for the local area network consists of twisted pair linking the workstations to two Pentium servers. Since the network serves two floors, thick-cable backbone was installed to link the mezzanine level. The network was installed in March of 1994.
The ceremonial opening for the telecenter took place June 29, 1994. Currently the center has eight telecommuters. Recruitment efforts are on-going, and include production and distribution of promotional materials as well as open house tours of the facility. In addition, media coverage in the form of newspaper articles and press releases has been strong and positive.
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