Bunker Hill Community College Health & Wellness Center Earns LEED Gold Certification

BOSTON, Feb. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Bunker Hill Community College's Health & Wellness Center, a 48,000-square-foot structure housing the College's nursing and health professions programs, has received LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The Gold-level certification indicates that the building meets stringent requirements of the internationally recognized rating system, and also exceeds standards set by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Order #484 which mandates levels of efficiency requirements in the design and construction of new buildings.

The Health & Wellness Center includes classrooms, offices and state-of-the-art laboratories serving the College's rapidly expanding healthcare programs, which train students for high-demand jobs in the regional economy. The facility also includes a gymnasium and a fitness center.

The new facility is one of just two LEED Gold buildings in the fifteen-campus Massachusetts community college system.  The building's sustainability highlights include a variety of passive solar design strategies that maximize the use of the sun's energy for heating and cooling needs. These include transom and clerestory windows, external louvers, occupancy sensors and roof overhangs.  The building's design also reduces unnecessary runoff by diverting rain into two bio-retention ponds that irrigate native wetland plants. In addition, many materials used in the building reduce environmental impact because they are certified for low emissions and have been sourced within a 500 mile radius of the College.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an internationally recognized green building certification system, providing third-party verification that a building was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality and stewardship of resources.

Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts. The College enrolls more than 12,000 students on two campuses and at four satellite locations. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in Massachusetts. Six in ten students are people of color and more than half of BHCC's students are women. The College also enrolls more than 700 international students who come from more than 90 countries and speak 75 different languages.

SOURCE Bunker Hill Community College

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