When public agencies joined forces to redevelop a dilapidated housing project on 82 acres in Portland, OR, their vision was to create a flourishing community and attract a diverse economic mix to New Columbia. The Housing Authority of Portland (HAP) used a Hope VI grant and completely rebuilt the site to include public housing, affordable rental housing, senior rentals, and market-rate homes for sale. The organization estimated approximately 350 families with young children would move into the area.

HAP engaged in conversations with key institutions to bring a range of income groups to the area and saw a school as a key component in building community. Because Portland citizens strongly value resource conservation and actively protect the region’s green spaces, New Columbia’s design incorporated environmentally responsible practices. A sustainable school offered the opportunity to replicate those principles.

“We’re viewed as one of the sustainability capitals of the nation and the school captures something that’s integral to Portland. It fosters an ethic that plays out in the decision-making for people who could live elsewhere but choose to move here,” says Doug Capps, Rosa Parks Project Manager at Portland Public Schools (PPS).

As the district’s first school designed to green standards, Rosa Parks spurred excitement about the project, but it took an experimental partnership to make the school a reality.

PPS faced cutbacks and declining enrollment that led to building inventory consolidations and reconfigurations. As a result, the district had only built one new school in the past three decades. The district did not have the financial resources for a new school, but the fact remained that the existing schools could not accommodate the number of projected students in this area.

HAP donated land at the edge of the New Columbia development for the school and the idea for a community campus began to take shape. The Boys & Girls Club of Portland (B&GC) was interested in establishing a presence in the neighborhood. The organization offers youth guidance and development programs to kids aged 6 to 18 with an emphasis on serving youth from disadvantaged circumstances. Discussions about co-locating the school and B&GC ensued.

Their programs had complimentary aspects, and the B&GC needed most of their facility after school hours and during the summer to carry out their mission. The City of Portland Parks & Recreation agreed to build a gym at its University Park Community Center just a few hundred yards away. Further, the city agreed to buy the site of the old elementary school that Rosa Parks replaced. New Market Tax Credits also defrayed some of the costs and, in the end, PPS paid $8M for the features of a $20M facility.

Although PPS was committed to high performance schools, it was the first time the district applied these principles to a new facility. District officials looked for an architecture firm with experience in sustainable school design and selected Dull Olson Weekes Architects (DOWA) for Rosa Parks.

Sharing space allowed both PPS and B&GC to reduce their environmental footprint by decreasing the amount of materials used and minimizing energy consumption. The team spent countless hours discussing all the services each organization needed and how to provide them side by side.

At the south end, the school has the classroom wing, administration area, library, and community resource center. The B&GC lies to the north with a games room, teen center, offices, and various learning rooms. Joining both facilities is a 10,650-sq.-ft. area that houses a kitchen, cafeteria, art classroom, computer lab, and music classroom. During school hours, Rosa Parks uses the shared space, and after school, a large sliding glass door sections off the school for security while allowing the B&GC to use the shared space.

The site was long and lean and oriented in a north/south direction, which made it more difficult to control daylight. Moreover, the city identified legacy trees that needed to be preserved on site. It presented an initial challenge, but DOWA Project Manager Karina Ruiz says that having to serpentine the building around the trees turned out to be the best possible solution.

The designers used the unusual layout to create four age-grouped“neighborhoods” with five to six classrooms that cluster around them. The neighborhoods serve as extended learning and performance areas for instructional services.

“With a school that serves 550 students, the configuration adds a sense of intimacy to the space and offers parents a place to mingle while waiting to pick up their children,” Ruiz explains.“It’s been really gratifying to see parents use the areas to socialize and adopt them as their own spaces.”

With no option for double-loaded corridors, DOWA placed glazing on the exterior corridor to bring daylight through the commons area and into the classrooms, offering an abundance of transparency and light throughout the space. Energy-efficient lighting and daylight-responsive controls in the classrooms turn off lights when adequate daylight is present to conserve electricity. Interior light shelves help distribute the light while vertical and horizontal sun screens on the building’s exterior reduce glare and thermal gain.

The team took into account student’s health and adopted a variety of strategies to create a healthy learning environment at Rosa Parks. An Indoor Air Quality plan controlled dust, mold, and pollutants during construction. The selection of low-VOC (volatile organic compound) materials (such as paints, adhesives, carpets) minimizes off-gassing; a green housekeeping plan and an integrated pest management plan restrict toxic chemicals from being used in the maintenance of the building inside and out. An in-wall displacement ventilation system limits air mixing and prevents airborne viruses from lingering in classrooms.

In addition to the air quality benefits, the in-wall displacement ventilation system saves energy. Traditional systems that force air down from the ceiling require more energy in order to maintain adequately comfortable temperatures at the occupant level. Using a high-efficiency condensing gas boiler, Mazzetti & Associates engineers designed Rosa Parks’ HVAC system to bring in fresh air at a low level in the walls and circulate water through the baseboards to heat the space. The air naturally rises as it heats up and exits through grilles in the ceiling.

The combination of daylighting strategies, displacement ventilation, and other measures such as energy-efficient windows and increased insulation, will enable the building to potentially save 25 percent more energy over a baseline building built to Oregon code requirements. The district also purchased “green power” from renewable sources to meet all of the building’s regulated electricity needs for one year.

The building and site are learning tools for students and teachers alike according to Rosa Parks Principal Tamala Newsome. DOWA and the design team worked to make the sustainable elements something the students could see, touch and feel. Teachers are excited to talk about the green features and structure activities that explain how they operate.

Science lessons have more meaning as students learn about how and why bioswales on the property collect and treat 100 percent of the site’s stormwater to keep it from entering the city’s river system. Drought tolerant plants create a landscape that requires 60 percent less water for irrigation. An informational kiosk allows kids to monitor real-time data on electric power generated from the building’s 1.1-kW photovoltaic system funded by the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

“The students are becoming more aware of environmental stewardship just by being in the school,” says Newsome. “The building demonstrates that we have choices and options to protect the environment. It teaches the kids to respect our resources and helps us think about how to build and sustain ourselves.”

PPS Energy Specialist Catherine Diviney joined the district after the project was underway. PPS had been very interested in pursuing LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, but budget and schedule concerns jeopardized some of the green aspects. LEED is a rating system administered by the U.S. Green Building Council that offers third-party verification for projects meeting a range of criteria in sustainable design and construction. Diviney reinvigorated the idea and brought Green Building Services Inc. on board to help keep the project’s sustainable initiatives on track and complete the LEED certification process.

“It makes sense to consider life-cycle costs and operational issues,” says Diviney. “If a sustainable feature was about to be value-engineered out, it wasn’t difficult to keep it in the project once people saw the true impact.”

In some cases, green choices actually saved money up front. Stained concrete floors in the shared space was an inexpensive alternative that provides excellent durability in an area that will see a lot of traffic and creates savings from reduced maintenance over time. Other sustainable material choices included Marmoleum flooring, recycled carpet, exposed wood, and materials that were locally manufactured and contained recycled content.

The project has been an amazing success on multiple fronts. Combining services helped create facilities that would have totaled $35M separately into one $17Mn campus. By remaining true to the sustainable objectives, Rosa Parks became one of the first 15 LEED Gold certified schools in the nation and the first public elementary school west of the Mississippi to achieve this high ranking.

Daniel Laurendeau, Executive Development Officer of BG&C, says the community’s response to having the new club was astonishing. B&GC originally hoped to have 300 children join the program over the summer, but the summer session closed with well over 800 members. Laurendeau anticipates an increase to 1,200 members by the end of the 2007 calendar year.

The goal of the school was to truly integrate into the community. As part of the community campus, Rosa Parks has done exactly that. The school is a cornerstone of the redevelopment, serving the parents and children of New Columbia as well as the greater Portland area.

“We’re in the education business, and we educate kids to be good citizens,” says Capps. “A clear mark of good citizenship is learning to be a steward of our natural resources and preserve them for future generations.”

Katrina Shum Miller, NZIA, Associate AIA, LEED AP, is a principal at Green Building Services Inc., a professional consulting firm that helps clients successfully adopt green building and facility management practices. Katrina can be reached at 866/743-4277 or Katrina@greenbuildingservices.com.