HDC tweaks Small Friends new green schoolhouse
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Small Friends brought its new green schoolhouse back to the Historic District Commission last week for a major revision review.

Having previously received HDC approval for a 6,638-square-foot conventional building last May, Small Friends saw the green light over the last year, electing to build an environment-friendly and energy efficient building instead.

The HDC is largely removed from ruling on the greenness of the building, because much of the redesign is occurring as a result of Small Friends seeking certification from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

In response to an HDC request made May 1, Small Friends is adding porches on the east, west and south sides of the building to soften the appearance of the structure from Nobadeer Farm Road.

"We changed the shape from the original version pretty substantially," said LEED-certified Architect Steven Blashfield of Chip Webster & Associates. "Because of the courtyard, it is more of an H-shape whereas it was more of an L-shape before."

He was scheduled to return to the HDC meeting last night with the revised plans.

Blashfield added around 300 square feet of space to the building, half of which is for a recycling area. Although he and the Small Friends Building Committee have not entirely worked out all of the elements of the building that they hope will convince the U.S. Green Building Council to grant them a gold certification rating (three levels of ascending certification are possible - silver, gold and platinum), the existing changes reflect what the HDC must rule on.

"Our goal is to increase the amount of natural light and ventilation to the building, which will reduce the need for artificial lighting and electric use, and it will also reduce the need for cooling during the summertime," said Blashfield. "It's also to have a tighter envelope so there is less energy loss."

Those aspects of the project had to be determined before Blashfield took Small Friends' new plans back to the HDC, but other internal engineering and site issues of the school building can be dealt with as the project progresses.

"I think down the road we're going to be exploring solar . . . and we're going to be trying to capture rain water so they won't have to use so much town water for irrigation," he said.

Blashfield added that parallel to the HDC process, he and the building committee are starting to engineer the structure and design its systems, including advanced framing techniques that use less lumber, which in turn sends less waste to the landfill.

Getting the gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council meant logging a certain number of points in the council's LEED rating system in a range from 39- 51 to qualify, said Building Committee Chairperson Joan Ottinger.

Ottinger said they scored 42 points from meeting the needs of six categories, including sustainability of the site; water efficiency; energy atmosphere; materials and resources; indoor environmental quality and innovation and design. Eight of the categories either did not apply to Small Friends' project or could not be met, and 12 more were left as possibilities for the future.

"We're mostly interested in the interior of the building in terms of the air quality and the way the air moves through there because our first concerns are the health of the children and our staff," said Ottinger.

She added that on May 24, Blashfield will meet with the design team and the building committee to tell them how much the building will cost based on LEED construction standards they will follow. Currently, the Small Friends Building Dreams Capital Campaign is about halfway towards raising the $3.5 million for the entire project including an endowment. Of that amount, it is budgeting $2.7 million for the new building.

Given all the permits and a completed design, Blashfield said Small Friends wants its general contractor, J.K. Scanlan of East Falmouth, Mass., to break ground mid-to-late August and have the building completed by September 2008.

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