By Amanda McGregor
STAFF WRITER
—
A crane lowered trays of vegetation that workers hefted onto the rooftops of a new residence hall at Salem State College earlier this week.
The installation of the "green roofs" is a final piece of the $57.5 million construction of Marsh Hall, which will open to students in less than three weeks.
School officials say the new dormitory — set to house 525 sophomores — is notable for its environmental design, as well as its contribution to the campus housing stock.
"Being a residential campus is good for our students and very good for our college," college President Patricia Meservey said.
The new dorm features various design elements aimed at reducing energy consumption and environmental impact, from the roof and the windows down to the boilers and the courtyard drainage system, according to project manager Leif Lamoray.
"There are five different green roofs," Lamoray said during a tour this week of the new five-story dormitory that features a brick facade and copper facing. "The largest benefit, from what I understand, is the insulation value."
The "live roofs" are lined with a thick membrane upon which the vegetation was installed.
The plants are "maintenance-free" and reduce runoff, insulate the building and abate the heat that a regular roof would deflect back into the atmosphere, according to Tony DiNuzzo, assistant director of facilities.
"The water gets applied to the growth, and there is almost no runoff," DiNuzzo said. "There is a mix of vegetation in each pot, and it requires no watering — no anything. It's quite amazing."
Lamoray said a typical roof has a life span of about 20 years; whereas the parts of the residence hall with a green roof should last 30 to 35 years, changing out the vegetation once.
In October, crews are slated to install solar panels that will provide domestic hot water, he said.
Dorm details
The new dorm is on Central Campus off Loring Avenue, next to Atlantic Hall, which opened in 2004. There is a grassy field/courtyard between the two dorms.
Marsh Hall brings the school's on-campus housing capacity to 1,927, which is 30 percent of the student body at what was traditionally a commuter school.
Central Campus is also home to the Bertolon School of Business, the Enterprise Center and a synthetic turf baseball field.
According to the college, the new dorm represents the school's ongoing effort to redevelop the former Sylvania site into Central Campus and restore the adjacent marshlands. The area previously housed a landfill that contained silicon dioxide fragments and heavy metals, according to a press release from the college.
The college has already installed solar panels on Atlantic Hall, with an 85,000-kilowatt annual capacity, according to DiNuzzo.
"The importance of being green and demonstrating good stewardship of our resources is something important to all of us on Salem State's campus," Meservey said in a press release.
Construction of the 158,000-square-foot Marsh Hall began in March 2009. Resident assistants moved in this week, and students will arrive Aug. 30.
On a recent morning, workers buzzed around the dormitory, vacuuming, scrubbing, unwrapping furniture and equipment, and completing tasks like ironing out last-minute kinks with a few of the card-entry systems on the dorm room doors.
Marsh Hall will be the only dormitory on campus that houses a full-service dining hall, according to Lamoray, who said the ground floor dining facility seats 380 — and a total of 1,000 people per meal sitting.
The dormitory houses a large and small conference room and a fitness area and is set to display student and faculty art throughout the building, including murals on the ground floor by Mark Malloy, an associate professor of art.
The dorm, designed by DiMella Shaffer architects in Boston, has four pods with 18 to 32 rooms each. Students can control the temperatures in their rooms by plus or minus 2 degrees, DiNuzzo said.
The majority of the rooms are doubles, except for three triples. There are single rooms and suites for 17 resident assistants, three graduate assistants, one assistant resident director and one resident director, according to Lamoray, who works for Leftfield Inc. Walsh Brothers of Boston is the project's construction manager.
Staff writer Amanda McGregor can be reached at amcgregor@salemnews.com.
'Green' features
Room air conditioning shuts off automatically when a window is opened
High-efficiency boilers and hot water heaters
PVC tile floors (instead of vinyl) made from recycled materials
Bamboo — a sustainable building material — in the main lobbies, ceilings and cabinetwork
Gravity-fed heating and air conditioning, without fans, for less energy use and cheaper maintenance
Drought-tolerant vegetation on roof to insulate the building and reduce runoff
Granite retaining wall in the courtyard to reduce runoff and filter sediment before it reaches the nearby marsh
Estimated water consumption 1.6 million gallons less per year than otherwise allowed by code
Source: Salem State College
