Chemeketa Community College
Center for Business & Industry
Chemeketa Community College has had a significant presence in downtown Salem for many years. The Center for Business and Industry takes this presence to a new level, providing not only training facilities and assistance to small businesses as the College’s TED Center has in the past, but looks to the future by providing technologically advanced educational facilities and enhanced business resource and support services in the downtown core, and facilities for training, social functions and conferencing for businesses within the District’s tri-county service area. All of these services utilize the most current technology available and are equipped with infrastructure that is capable of adapting to the changes and advancements in digital imaging and WAN delivery that will be inevitable.
The Center is designed to accommodate a variety of sizes of lease spaces for new businesses and strategic partners to enhance the mission of the College and the Center. This project bridged the north side of the downtown’s core with the developing north downtown improvements. Scale, proportion, proximity to the sidewalk and street are all important design elements when building downtown; the need for windows at the street elevations and weather protection at the building are design requirements downtown. Arbuckle Costic designed this building as a four-story brick and glass structure. The glass provided the necessary transparency to meet the City’s design requirements, and the brick provided an opportunity to reflect the classic materials of Chemeketa’s main campus.
One of the most exciting aspects of this project was to design a highly sustainable structure and Chemeketa’s Center for Business and Industry has wonderful opportunities, from unique day-lighting to careful storm water management. The building design incorporated both sustainable and energy saving strategies to achieve Silver-LEED® certification (awarded in Summer 2011), including a high-performance envelope, state-of-the-art HVAC and lighting controls, and use of sustainable and recycled materials. The college is using this site for solar energy generation as part of the state program.
Awards
2010 DJC Top Projects: Public Buildings $5-15 million, Second Place
|
