Monday LEEDoff: SUNY-Binghamton’s Cascade & Windham Dormitories, Vestal, NY

Last week, the Cascade and Windham residential buildings at SUNY-Binghamton’s Mountainview College (top and bottom in the image, respectively) each officially received a LEED Certified rating from USGBC. The two four-story, 70,000-square-foot dorms cost $23 million to build and are the 19th and 20th in the USGBC’s Upstate New York Chapter area to earn LEED certification (though over 600 are currently registered in pursuit thereof). Tracie Hall, Executive Director of the Upstate Chapter, presented SUNY-Binghamton President Lois B. DeFleur with recycled-glass plaques which will hang in each dorm’s lobby. Green features are LEED-standard, including energy-efficient HVAC systems, recycled-content construction materials, and site-sensitive construction practices designed to minimize the impact on an adjacent nature preserve. A team that included Buffalo-based Mach Architecture, Pathfinder Engineers, and LeChase Construction of Rochester executed the project, which broke ground back in March of 2002 and wrapped up in the summer of 2004.

The project’s certification is also significant given a looming LEED mandate for DASNY projects beginning in 2008. DASNY- the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York oversees a variety of both public and private projects across state university, court, and healthcare facilities, including the Cascade and Windham project. DASNY is aiming for a thirty-two percent reduction in energy use for each of the new buildings that it constructs under the LEED program. While the Cascade and Windham dorms are the first, they most certainly will not be the last LEED residence halls that DASNY builds across the SUNY system.

• Buildings Certified by Green Group (Inside BU)
• DASNY to Require LEED Silver (gbNYC)

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