Eyes on Emporia
Bobbi Mlynar
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Once in a while, a project comes together as if it was destined to happen.
Count the new Jones Education Center, now under construction, as one of those instances of good fortune. It’s a bonus that the project now is being talked about at a national level, bringing attention to the educational institutions involved, as well as to the net-zero, energy-efficient way it is being built.
The center, initially called the Transitions House, is a cooperative project that brought together students, educators and administrators from the Flint Hills Technical College, Kansas State University, and the Emporia School District.
It was designed by students, is being built by students and will provide classrooms for still other students — and there will be extra space for the tech college and the community to use for conferences, offices and other activities.
“It’s going to continue to draw a great deal of attention to the community,” said Mike Crouch, executive director of the FHTC Foundation. “KSU is presenting information about it all over the country.”
“We just figured something like this is really good for the community and has really been good for our partnerships,” said FHTC President Dean Hollenbeck. “When we look at all the cooperation that is involved, some of the different entities, it is a unique project and something that the whole community can have a piece of and take part in.”
The building will feature cutting-edge “green” technology, such as photovoltaic cells, a ground-source heat-pump and insulated concrete walls and other innovations to save energy.
The Styrofoam-like basement wall forms are reinforced with metal and will stay in place instead of being removed, as is done in traditional-construction homes. Students in the construction-technology class now are building the frames that will hold energy-efficient windows. In all, the building will produce more energy than it uses.
“We will see, eventually, almost all of our buildings built like this,” Hollembeak said.
Limestone that had been buried when a highway project was built nearby was resurrected when the basement was dug. Some of it will be used as a retaining wall for the new building.
The grounds will be what Hollenbeck called a “xeriscape” with no grass or plants that require watering or maintenance, although an aesthetically pleasing courtyard has been designed into the plans.
“We’re not going to be mowing down there,” he said. “It’s going to be self-contained.”
Construction will spread over two years. Students need classroom time to learn the construction trade, and instructors are balancing the order of teaching necessary skills with actual order of construction on the buildings.
Students learning HVAC, electricity, air conditioning and other aspects of construction also are involved in the project.
And, as students, they are not able to put in the extra hours that a construction company crew would be able to do.
“At 3:30 in the afternoon they’re gone,” Hollenbeck said of the students.
Hollenbeck sees the students as a plus in the project, too. They live in Emporia and surrounding counties; some have families, and the majority plan to stay in this area to live and work.
The same is true of the students who will learn in the Jones Education Center. They will come from the Emporia High School Transitions program, operated by the Flint Hills Special Education Cooperative for students in Lyon and surrounding counties.
Transitions prepares disabled students to live and function independently or in a group after high school. Now, they are taught in a classroom arranged to resemble a home setting; that requires some imagination to apply what they have learned in a classroom setting to a real-life home setting. Educators know the students will be able to apply their knowledge more readily when their classroom actually is a furnished home.
The building will fulfill a need for the technical college, too.
“We’d been looking — and I had had an interest in this for several years — how we could develop some kind of recruiting tool for the construction program,” Hollenbeck said.
The high demand for houses built by the construction technology classes always left the tech college without a model home that potential buyers could tour. Selling the homes was never a problem, but Hollenbeck wanted to have a place to use as a recruiting tool and to showcase the skills of the students who soon will be working for others in the community or running their own businesses.
“The down side of it was that we would sell these homes almost immediately when they finished the project,” he said. “We didn’t have anything to show them. ... You can’t go in and see the craftsmanship, the things that are part of making those houses so nice and easy to sell.”
Hollenbeak’s search for a way to get that demo building got a major boost in 2009, when one of his faculty members talked with instructors from K-State’s division of architecture.
FHTC’s Sustainable Living director Bill Hanlon — formerly a construction technology instructor — was a panelist at the Kansas Housing Conference in Overland Park. Serving on the panel with him were Gary Coates, K-State professor of architecture, and Victor L. Regnier, Distinguished Faculty Chairman.
As the men talked about the work they had done in helping rebuild a “greener” Greensburg after it was destroyed by a tornado, Coates was struck with an idea.
“And I said, ‘Well, you know, wouldn’t it be fabulous if my students designed really cutting-edge, net-zero energy houses and your students built them?’” an earlier article quoted Coates as saying. “And he said, ‘That’s a really fabulous idea.’”
“That’s when all the stars started to align,” Hollenbeck said.
Coates already was familiar with the high-quality work done by students of construction technology instructors Larry Green and Benjamin Gray; he was comfortable with their taking responsibility for construction of the building Coates’ students would design.
Sixteen third-year architecture students, in teams of two, had five weeks to complete their designs for the net-zero, energy-efficient building.
When they had finished, K-State juniors Sarah Dewes and Levi Walls were declared the winners.
The project became even more meaningful, Hollenbeak said, when it was learned that several people from the institutions involved had relatives enrolled in Transitions-type programs.
The project was announced about the same time that Mike Crouch took over as executive director of the FHTC Foundation. Crouch would need to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to turn the architect students’ plans into a reality. Because the work will be done primarily by students, the college will realize a savings on labor costs to build the $550,000 to $600,000 house, Hollenbeak said. The higher construction cost is attributed not only to the initial charge for energy efficiencies, but also for making the building compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act criteria, and additional architect and engineering costs required by the city of Emporia.
Crouch soon won a $200,000 grant from the Jones Trust, and began a campaign to get enough money or in-kind donations to match the Jones award; that has been accomplished.
The Loretto Langley Charitable Trust donated $40,000, as did the Sunderland Foundation in Kansas City.
“We were able to meet the match because of some of the in-kind contributions,” Crouch said, “but we still need to raise some cash funds. ... There’s no gift that’s too small. It’s all going to add up.”
Photographs, information about the house and how to make donations are on the FHTC web site, http://www.fhtc.edu, under “Foundation.”
“There’ll be more to come on that page,” Hollenbeck said.
Other donors to the project are: Steve Coffman Construction, Emig and Associates, Logix Insulated Concrete Forms, Builders’ Choice Concrete, Reading Grain & Lumber, Sutherland Lumber, Mark II Lumber, Kolbe Windows, Diamond Solar Solutions, FHTC construction technology program, Loretto Langley Charitable Trust, APAC of Kansas, Kolde Concrete Services, and Water’s True Value.
gg (anonymous) says...
Nice article and great news for Emporia, but neither the article nor the website link tells the reader WHERE this building is going to be built?
Anyone know or is it a secret?
July 31, 2010 at 1:03 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
whatajoke (anonymous) says...
Let's edit before we post the article! We have Hollenbeck, Hollembeak, and Hollenbeak. I do believe all 3 names belong to 1 gentleman!
July 31, 2010 at 2:44 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
orlando (anonymous) says...
Isn't this the house being built on the south side of FHTC?
July 31, 2010 at 4:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Tell (anonymous) says...
Just wondering how burying styrofoam is green. How is that good for the earth?
July 31, 2010 at 5:36 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
create (anonymous) says...
Be sure to check the list of donors -- except for the trust, all are local small businesses who have contributed. They depend on our patronage for their livings. Shop Emporia for your building needs.
August 1, 2010 at 10:11 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
oh4theluvof (anonymous) says...
Tell,
I think you were just being litigious, but just in case, the styrofoam forms are insulation that doesn't decompose. In my opinion, it's finally a good use for that material.
Great story!
August 1, 2010 at 9:57 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )