University of Vermont officials gathered at a newly completed amphitheater on the university’s east campus on Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the formal opening of the University Heights Residential Learning Complex, an 800-bed, $60.6 million project – three-plus years in the making – that is a model of environmental design.

More than 150 UVM faculty, staff and students heard remarks from UVM president Daniel Mark Fogel; Carl Lisman, chair of the UVM board of trustees; Annie Steven, assistant vice president for campus and student life; Lauck Park, vice president for undergraduate education; Honors College dean Robert Pepperman Taylor; GreenHouse faculty director Walter Poleman; Stacey Miller, director of Residential Life; Student Government Association president Seth Bowden; and Inter-Residence Association president Melissa Martin.

The speakers lauded the new complex for representing the powerful outcome that a shared vision and collaborative approach can generate; for its dedication to green building practices, including its energy saving attributes, the demonstration projects it incorporates, and its use of local and regional materials, vendors, and subcontractors; for the ways in which it integrates academic and residential life at UVM; and for revitalizing and giving a sense of community to a part of the UVM campus that had previously lacked a cohesive center.

In a brief ceremony after the remarks, the speakers planted a white oak tree at the edge of the amphitheater. A mature oak had been removed to make way for the project.

The University Heights Residential Learning Complex is the next-to-largest building project in UVM’s history, second only to the Dudley H. Davis Center, the new student center the university is building, and is the largest residence hall complex on the UVM campus.

The new complex houses two residential colleges: the Honors College in the north complex, which opened in January 2006, and GreenHouse in the south complex, an environmentally themed residence hall that opened for the fall 2006 semester.

Many green features
In keeping with UVM’s new policy of constructing only environmentally friendly buildings, the new complex is LEED certified, meaning that it is being built to the exacting environmental standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.

The complex uses 68 percent less energy than comparable buildings and features such demonstration projects as composting toilets, green roofs and cork floors. Over 75 percent of construction waste material generated by the building project was recycled or reused. Over 20 percent of all construction materials were purchased locally or regionally manufactured, and approximately 60 percent of the major vendors and subcontractors were from Vermont.

A highlight of the new complex is a 500-foot vegetative swale that treats the stormwater created by the new project.

The complex houses 18 different styles of rooms, most with a personal bathroom; lounge and study space on every floor; music practice rooms; project rooms; libraries; recreation rooms; and multipurpose rooms.

The university has also just completed a major landscaping project adjacent to the new buildings that includes a new campus quadrangle, the vegetative swale and the new amphitheater. For more information about the landscaping project, read this article in the view.