Construction on rec center focuses on sustainability

Scheduled to open in winter of 2010, the new student recreation center will be built, maintained and operated with green practices constantly in mind, according to project architects and Campus Recreation staff.

During a presentation in the Smith Memorial Student Union on Wednesday, the PSU Campus Recreation office presented the sustainability practices that are being considered for the new $71 million Academic and Student Recreation Center being built on the site of the former PCAT Building.

The school is hoping to achieve a silver rating from the nationally recognized Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, which rates buildings on sustainable design. This will be done through the use of sustainable materials and practices throughout the construction and lifespan of the building.

“Twenty percent of the materials will be locally harvested and produced,” according to Miles Woofter, one of the architects who helped design the building. To be LEED certificated, materials in a building must qualify as local materials, which cannot be transported from more than 500 miles away.

In the construction, there will be an emphasis on using materials with little or no volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. VOCs are present in many types of carpets, paints and adhesives and are harmful to human health, said Josh Read, an environmental management graduate student who is working closely on the sustainability aspects of the building’s construction and operations.

Other sustainable materials being used in the construction include rubber made from rubber trees instead of nonrenewable oil, recycled shoe soles for the three-lane running track and sustainably harvested lumber for the wood floors.

The main focus of Read’s work with the rec center will be to make sure the office furniture, building equipment, cleaning supplies and all other fixtures are produced and transported to the site sustainably. Products transported longer distances often leave larger carbon footprints.

It is important to Read that the companies these products are purchased from have sustainable business routines as well. When making decisions, he continually asks, “Is this just green-washing or do they [businesses] have truly sustainable practices?”

Many of the new recreation center’s everyday functions will also adhere to many of LEED’s requirements. These functions include recycling rainwater into a 70,000-gallon storage tank that will be used in the toilets and the fire alarms’ sprinkler system. Lighting and climate controls will also be installed to help save electricity. Construction staff say the building is predicted to save nearly 30 percent in energy costs, compared to a similar building without LEED measures.

The entire project, starting with last year’s demolition of the PCAT Building, has aimed to be as environmentally friendly as possible, Woofter said.

“The demolition process recycled 94 percent of the materials claimed in the initial phase,” he said.

The new recreation center will be one of about two dozen similar sustainable facilities built across the United States over the last few years. Sonoma State University in California completed a green recreation center in 2004 that embodied many of the same features as the PSU building, including photovoltaic solar panels and other energy-saving measures.

Campus Recreation says the new rec center is an answer to countless student requests for an improved recreation facility and to address increasing enrollment, which is expected to hit 35,000 by 2012. The rec center portion of the new $71 million, 180,000 square-foot building costs $35 million, and the facility will also include classrooms, offices and ground-level retail space.

For continually updated information about the new campus recreation center, visit www.campusrec.pdx.edu/reccenter/index.php.