Building A Building And Capacity

One of the things that became very clear to us as we set out on the effort to build a green office space for The Community Foundation was the lack of experience in the community on this issue. When we started down this path, we were frequently greeted with blank stares by people who weren't really familiar with the idea of an environmentally friendly building that minimized energy use.

As I've said before on this blog, we think the reason nobody ever built a green building in Berks County was that....well.....nobody had ever built a green building. This is a particular challenge for a community foundation that tries, whenever it's possible, to work with companies from our region.

To break this cycle, we reached out to architects across the Mid-Atlantic region who had a strong backgrounds in sustainable design. We knew that, for a lot of reasons, our project would be very attractive to firms specializing in green design so we imposed an unusual requirement: They could submit a proposal to design our building, but they had to do it in partnership with an architecture firm located in Berks County. That's rare for a project this size, but many firms responded.

After an extensive review process we selected the Philadelphia-based firm Re:Vision Architecture. They submitted their proposal in partnership with Reading-based DesignWorks.

What we hoped to do was to make sure that at least one Berks County architecture firm could list a LEED certified building on their resume, leading to more buildings. Today, Re:Vision and DesignWorks are working on another local project, this time with DesignWorks in the lead. It's great to see a plan work.

Fortunately, the same pattern came together for the construction management team. Allentown-based Alvin H. Butz Inc. teamed up with Burkey Construction of Reading to build the building.

These two teams have worked together with incredible dedication. As a client, we've been very dedicated to sustainability, but very, very budget conscious. They've worked through the added challenge of creating these joint ventures and, when our project is done, Berks County will have---for the first time---the capacity to design and construct buildings in a whole new---and far more responsible way.