Center planners hope to go 'green'
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BY MATTHEW HANSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln hopes to open its new Culture Center, a proposed addition to the Nebraska Union, by 2009.
The UNL chapter of Emerging Green Builders hopes the center will feature south windows that heat the building naturally, technology that uses rainwater to flush toilets and maybe even plywood made from cornstalks.
Add enough environmentally friendly touches and the new Culture Center could be the first building on a Big 12 campus to receive certification from a “green” building organization rapidly gaining importance around the country.
That certification would carry prestige, says Jeremy Emerson, an architecture graduate student. More importantly, it would mean UNL had committed to build something that would help the campus environment, not harm it.
“At this point, pretty much everyone we talk to recognizes we should be doing this,” says Emerson, a leader of UNL’s Emerging Green Builders. “Now it’s a matter of: Will we do it?”
Emerson and Leila Knowles, a junior civil engineering student, helped convince UNL’s student government to pass a resolution in April calling for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification.
They’ve met with James Griesen, the vice chancellor for student affairs, and Charlie Francis, director of the Nebraska Union.
They didn’t have to sell Francis much on the idea. He recently traveled to a conference and attended a session about environmentally friendly building.
“I think that conversation is exciting,” Francis says. “I see it as a potential point of pride for the institution and the union.”
Pride doesn’t build buildings, of course; Francis cautions that the university must investigate the cost associated with the LEED certification before moving forward.
The 30,000-square-foot Union expansion, which will include a 300-person meeting room, offices for minority student groups and student lounges, is expected to cost $8.7 million. Students agreed to pick up half the tab during March’s student election. The other half must come from private donations or university funds.
Cecil Steward, an emeritus professor and former dean of UNL’s architecture college, says prospective builders often assume it will cost far more to build an environmentally friendly building than a traditional one.
While such buildings may be more expensive to build — for example, nontoxic paint costs more per gallon, Steward says — they are generally cheaper to operate.
“We waste a great deal of public money with our first-cost-only attitude about construction,” says Steward, a longtime advocate for environmentally friendly architecture.
“In my mind, every public building should be a green building.”
The center’s architect could minimize operating costs with even such rudimentary steps as the building’s shape, landscaping that uses native Nebraska plants that don’t require irrigation and the placement of its windows to maximize natural light.
“The sun is free,” Emerson says.
Soaring energy costs will force architects to rethink building design, Steward says. Much of the institutional resistance to LEED certification has disappeared in the past several years, he says, in large part because builders now see an economic benefit from it.
He points to the new National Park Service headquarters in Omaha, a LEED-certified building, as evidence that the movement is gaining momentum in Nebraska.
Knowles, one of the student leaders of UNL’s Emerging Green Builders, hopes it picks up steam on campus.
She points out that the university has attempted to keep energy costs down by turning off the heat in some campus buildings every night.
“They tried to cut costs here or there. We think it’d be more beneficial to look at the big picture.”
Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or mhansen@journalstar.com.
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