The building will use geothermal heating and cooling,
By Samantha C. DePoy
Staff Writer

FARMINGTON – The Planning Board slid through an application for the University of Maine at Farmington to build a new environmentally friendly four-story building for its education department.

The final vote, after much deliberation for the College of Education, Health and Rehabilitation building, was 4-3. Lloyd Smith, Clayton King and David Averill were opposed.

The building will be located at High and Lincoln streets. There are three buildings there now; plans are to relocate those buildings or reuse their materials.

Those voting in opposition expressed support for the project but were concerned about parking around the building, which will have a footprint of more than 15,000 square feet.

The current footprint of impervious surfaces is .57 acres with the proposed footprint being .79 acres, said Will Haskell, of Gorrill-Palmer Consulting Engineers, the firm doing the site work.

The college plans to add 11 parking spaces around the building, eight of which will be street side spaces thanks to the widening of Lincoln Street.

A stipulation to the motion of approval was that the college must present the board a summary of their current parking situation. Currently, there are 1,199 parking spaces on campus, and 130 street parking spaces.

Designed by PDT Architects of Portland, the building will have two floors of classroom space and two floors of office space. There will also be a lounge area and a resource library.

The building is designed with an eye for the environment and will use geothermal heating and cooling, including a living eco-roof and utilize natural light, explained Jeff Fleming of PDT.

The college’s development office is raising money to supplement the funds raised during a 2001 bond referendum for upgrades to the UMaine System.

If fund-raising goes as planned, the groundbreaking will be in the spring of 2004, said Bob Lawrence, director of facilities management for UMF. The project would take over a year to be complete, he added.

In regards to the parking situation, Lawrence stressed that the college has an enrollment cap of 2,000 full-time equivalent students, meaning that no new students or faculty will require parking.

Board member Smith suggested that the issue go before a public hearing, but fellow board member Tom Eastler, who is also a UMF Geology professor, took issue with that, saying that abutters of the project were notified and none came to the board meeting.

Eastler suggested that the board was asking too much of UMF. He encouraged the board to consider all of UMF’s other projects in the past few decades, none of which have had a negative impact in the community.

“We’re building a one-of-a-kind building,” he said. “This should not be a debatable project.

This is a several million dollar infusion into the environment.”

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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