Going green from the start makes process easier

When the new Providence Community Health Centers moves to 369 Prairie Ave. sometime next year, most people likely won’t notice the new building’s most distinctive features.
Providence Community Health Centers has set a goal for the project: it will be designed and built for an age when conservation, recycling and energy efficiency are everyone’s concern. The 40,000-square-foot medical facility will include dozens of features intended to make it eco-friendly: lights will turn off automatically when people leave a room; tiles will be made of re-used materials; walls will be thoroughly insulated to prevent heat loss in winter.
When completed, the building will get a stamp of approval from the U.S. Green Building Council. The plans already meet nonprofit organization’s requirements for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification at the silver level.
“There’s a lot of paperwork involved in getting green certification, so we hired a LEED consultant to help with the project from the beginning,” said Merrill Thomas, CEO of Providence Community Health Centers. “There are hundreds and hundreds of options. What type of windows do you use? What materials? Having a lot of choices makes it easier, but at the same time, it makes it more complicated.”
When many people hear the words “green building,” they think of eye-catching features such as solar panels or rooftop vegetation. None of the environmental adaptations at the new medical clinic will be that obvious, however.
“If you look at this building, you’ll probably have no way of knowing it’s green,” said David Prengaman, a principal at Vision 3 Architects, the firm that designed the project. “The Providence Community Health Centers aren’t trying to say to the world, ‘Look, we’ve got a green building.’ They’re doing things this way because it’s the right thing to do.”
Prengaman notes that Providence Community Health Centers’ first step toward a green project was choosing the Prairie Avenue location. It’s an old industrial site with several vacant mills structures that once housed Federated Lithographers and other manufacturing businesses that left Rhode Island long ago. “They are not using more open space,” Prengaman said. “It’s an urban location that already has utility infrastructure. It’s on a bus route. Just by choosing that site they’re earning points toward green certification.”
Clean-up crews hired by Providence Community Health Centers already have removed industrial wastes that made the site a brownfield, as builders call areas contaminated with potentially-hazardous materials. And when demolition workers tore down some smaller structures on the four-acre lot, bricks and other bits of masonry were ground up on site and used as gravel for the project. The new facility will eventually include both old buildings and new construction.
“We have a goal of recycling or salvaging 75 percent of the demolition debris,” Prengaman said. “That means less material dumped at landfills.”
When new materials are needed, builders will make an effort to find products that produced with an eye toward conserving the Earth’s resources. For example, Prengaman notes that at least 50 percent of the wood used in construction will be supplied by lumber companies that practice sustainable forest management.
Preventing the waste of natural resources is the goal behind a number of planned features. “We’re utilizing lighting control sensors that turn off the lights when a room is empty, and dim the lights when the sun’s shining through the windows,” Prengaman said. “And we’re designing a sophisticated storm water management system so that water is kept on site, rather than allowed to run off into the neighborhood and down storm drains.” Even the parking lot has been designed with conservation in mind: a percentage of the 195 spaces will be reserved for fuel-efficient or low-emission vehicles.
The plans also address concerns that the paints, carpeting, adhesives and other materials often used in office construction can emit chemical vapors that some believe cause allergies and other ailments. Thomas notes that builders will shun such products. “We’re a health center, so we want a building that’s safe for our patients,” he said.
Some involved with the project say it may be “the nation’s first green and smart health center,” the latter distinction meaning the building will be wired for electronic communication and digital technology during construction, although there is no way to verify those claims.
Nonetheless, notes Darrell Lee, Providence Community Health Centers’ development consultant on the project, the new facility will include innovations that could be copied elsewhere. Lee points out that health care reform and federal stimulus spending could spark a small construction boom for community health center across the country, and he’s encouraging planners and builders to study the Providence facility.
“It’s our hope,” he said, “that when those projects begin, our green and smart building will serve as a model. We could help other community health centers become energy-efficient.”
Thomas dismisses the suggestion that some of the eco-features could add to construction costs. “In the long term, especially in New England, it makes sense to build something that’s more energy efficient,” he says. “We’re a nonprofit, and we expect to be at the new location for at least 20 or 30 years, so there will be savings. The key is to start from the beginning. Expenses can get bigger if you wait.” &#8226