Skip to main content

Gardens on Spring Creek Visitor Center Achieves LEED Gold Certification

Gardens on Spring Creek Visitor Center Achieves LEED Gold®  Certification

Through the collaboration numerous industry leaders, the City of Fort Collins Gardens on Spring Creek has achieved LEED Gold® certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for The Gardens’ Visitor Center expansion. The building was awarded the V4 ID+C: Commercial Interiors certification with 65 points.

 

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the most widely used green building rating system in the world, providing a framework for healthy, highly efficient and cost-saving green buildings. LEED certification is a globally recognized symbol of sustainability achievement and leadership.

 

“It was a pleasure to work with a creative and resourceful team of experts to achieve LEED Gold on this unique project,” said Michelle Provaznik, Director of the Gardens on Spring Creek.  “The Visitor’s Center is beautiful, functional and sustainable – what more could we ask for our botanic garden?”

 

The Gardens on Spring Creek Visitor Center was originally built in 2004.  The 2019 renovation was part of a two-year, $6 million expansion project that allowed The Gardens to fully realize its Master Plan.  As the heart of The Gardens’ operations and visitor experience, it now features a large community meeting room, new entry way with gift shop, café concessions (slated to open in 2021) and additional office space.


 

In addition, the Visitor Center now features the Butterfly House - a year-round glass house home to hundreds of North American butterflies and dozens of varieties of flowering plants, operated in partnership with the Butterfly Pavilion.  This warm and experiential sensory experience allows all ages to get “up close” to both butterflies and plants in a tropical environment.  The garden was carefully curated to provide nectar-rich plants for the butterflies, as well as locations for roosting, resting and basking.

The expansion was designed by Architecture West, LLC and executed by Elder Construction as the general contractor.  NORESCO also played a key role in the certification process.  A full list of partners is provided below.

 “Not often are we able to participate in the design and construction of a facility that will so greatly impact our community,” said Patrick Elder, Vice President of Northern Colorado, LEED AP for Elder Construction.  “Our team thrived on the challenge of constructing such a unique building.  A glass conservatory designed to create a living environment for butterflies and meet LEED Gold standards is one of a kind.  We are thankful to have worked alongside brilliant engineering minds and talented craftsmen.  We truly hope the Butterfly House and Visitor Center will be enjoyed by many for years and years to come.”

“It was a team effort achieving LEED Gold® under LEED v4, and we are grateful to have served as the sustainability advisor on this amazing community attribute,” said Sue Bryant, Senior Sustainability Consultant at NORESCO. “The team was able to achieve the city’s sustainability goals through the use of renewable energy systems, water re-duction strategies, quality views, and significant reduction in construction waste.”


 


The following organizations were involved in the design and construction of the Visitor Center, as part of the Master Plan Expansion Project:

  • Acoustics & Interiors                                      
  • Advanced Roofing Technologies
  • Aggie Plumbing & Service, Inc.
  • Air Comfort
  • Alarm Specialties                                           
  • Applied Technical Services, Inc.       
  • Arcadia GlassHouse
  • Architecture West, LLC                     
  • Ballinger Custom Construction, Inc.
  • BG Buildingworks
  • Brinker’s Flooring       
  • Brothers Door Supply, Inc.
  • Butterfly Pavilion                    
  • Clean It Up                             
  • Commercial Glass     
  • Concrete Floor Systems
  • CTL Thompson
  • Curley Metal Fabrication
  • Custom Solar                         
  • Dynamic Specialties
  • EcoFoam / Insulations
  • Elder Construction                                         
  • Electronic Systems International
  • F & C Door Company            
  • Fort Collins Mobile Storage               
  • Gallegos Sanitation                                        
  • Holsinger Drywall
  • Hueber Industries
  • Iconergy
  • Institute for the Built Environment, CSU
  • Intertek
  • Interwst Consulting Group
  • Joe McGrane – Arts in Public Places Artist
  • JMJ Masonry
  • King Surveyors
  • Martin & Sons Excavating
  • Masters Flooring
  • Maximum Painting
  • Mechanical Solutions, Inc.
  • Meeting the Challenge
  • Merit Electric
  • Metal Solutions
  • NORESCO
  • Northland Safety / Farnsworth Group
  • Overhead Door Company of Northern Colorado
  • Perspective Design
  • Pierson Concrete
  • Power Products
  • Residential Damp-proofing, LLC
  • Sanchez-Fisher Janitorial Inc.
  • Sensera Systems
  • The Ballard Group
  • Timberline Insulation
  • Western States Fire Protection Company
  • Woodco of the Rockies
  • Zak George Landscaping
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Hornworms by Brionna McCumber

Gardeners in Colorado may find large green caterpillars with an iconic horn on their plants every summer—these are hornworms! Tobacco hornworms ( Manduca sexta ) feed on common garden crops, often leading to conflict with humans. These very hungry caterpillars are defoliators, damaging plants such as tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and eggplant. While the caterpillars use crops as a food source, which could be seen as negative, the moths provide a critical step in reproduction for the plants via pollination. Carolina Sphinx Moths ( Manduca sexta ), also called Hummingbird moths, are the adult form of hornworm s. They are known for their unique ability to hover mid-flight. Combined with the use of a special elongated proboscis, these moths are especially important for plant species with long tubular flowers that other pollinators cannot access or pollinate.  The Gardens on Spring Creek Butterfly House wants to highlight the importance of these specialized pollinators in our...
Read more

Winter Watering by Bryan Fischer

O ne of the brightest spots of living on the Front Range of Colorado is its winters. With more than 300 days of sunshine annually, we seldom see extended periods of the grey, chilly, precipitating skies common in so much of the country. It’s not unusual for daily highs to make it above 50 degrees. Much of this we have our elevation and distance from an ocean to thank – our sunlight is more intense than at sea level and our humidity lower, resulting in greater warming during the day compared to regions of similar latitude to our east or near a coastline .    Unfortunately for many landscape plants, however, that same day-night temperature differential spells trouble when paired with our lack of soil-insulating snow cover.  The resulting environment of warm days, frequent wind , and intense sun increases water demand, while low humidity saps the soil moisture reserves that our limited precipitation may provide. As a result, our landscape plants are predisposed to dehydration-indu...
Read more

Conifers: Pining for Something Different by Bryan Fischer

Evolving considerably earlier than flowering plants (angiosperms), conifers represent a long-lived and successful lineage of trees classified as gymnosperms. Gymnosperms were among the first true seed-bearing plants and evolved before specialized pollinators existed, so they are typically wind-pollinated. Seeds on these plants are produced between or on scale-like structures (think pine cone scales), rather than in fully enclosed structures, like tomato fruits. Gymnosperm, in fact, is Greek for “naked seeds,” so just imagine what that might imply for the origin of the word “gymnasium” … Long-lived, adaptable and attractive year-round, conifers represent a silver bullet of sorts for our Colorado gardens. Sadly, the overuse of just a few species and cultivars of these plants has given them a bad name. Don’t be put off – judicious use of conifers makes perennial plantings “pop” and provides structural bones during the fall and winter months.  Below, find a selection of underused, adap...
Read more