The developer and architect of the EnviroCenter, a green office project in Howard County, this week announced plans to significantly expand the facility and said he hoped it would serve as a model for future green commercial buildings across the country.
Stan Sersen completed the $1.2 million renovation of a 1905 farmhouse on Waterloo Road in Jessup in 2005. The 5,000-square-foot facility is home to Sersen’s ASG architectural firm, the Green Building Institute and several other green businesses and nonprofits.
Now, Sersen plans to add about 25,000 square feet to the project to meet growing demand for green office space. The cost of the project will total in excess of $5 million.
“Stan always had a planned vision after he got started on the facility,” said David Wooley-Wilson, executive director of the Green Building Institute. “It’s already considered one of the greenest buildings in Maryland.”
The facility makes use of green-building practices like daylighting, radiant floor heating and natural air ventilation.
The expansion will create “hundreds of new green jobs” in Howard County and Maryland, Wooley-Wilson said. The Green Building Institute, an educational nonprofit, will also expand its educational curriculum to businesses that want to “go green” and to the public.
“The expansion of the EnviroCenter and the Green Building Institute is exactly what this economy needs — more jobs in a field that is thriving, and ultimately more protection for our environment,” Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said in a statement.
In addition to about 16,000 square feet of new green commercial office space, the expansion will include 8,000 square feet of environmentally friendly indoor food production — believed to be the first combination of commercial office space and indoor food production in the country.
A full-time farmer will be hired to grow the food year-round for the companies and employees who lease space at the EnviroCenter.
Wooley-Wilson said a groundbreaking should occur by late spring or early summer 2009, with construction taking about a year and new companies moving into the expanded facility by the end of 2010.
“Stan’s plan is to open EnviroCenters across the country,” Wooley-Wilson said. “We’re looking to make this facility a model for the rest of the country.”
