Palmetto Branch Library

Manatee County, Florida

The Palmetto Branch Library was fist opened in 1970 as a 6,500 sf. facility for Manatee County Government. The original architect, Sidney R. Wilkinson, AIA, designed the building for future expansion. A key feature to facilitate this was the construction of the southern exterior walls. They were built as knock-out panels with intermittent steel column supports, and the building was purposely situated to the north end of the property to create a greenyard for the expansion. Now, 37 years later, the fruition of the fore planners has arrived, with the opening of the expanded and remodeled 13,650 sq. ft. library facility designed by Wade Trim and Renker Eich Parks Architects. The expansion was designed to provide a children’s library area, a large multi-use room to serve the local community, a central entry lobby and circulation hub, new public restrooms, and additional staff work areas. The project is part of the rejuvenation of the historic main street on 10th Avenue in Palmetto.

Sustainability

The goal of sustainability emerged, and became the lens for all design decisions that were to be made on the project. With the initial starting point of reusing the existing shell of the original library, thereby immediately saving a tremendous amount of material and reducing landfill load, the design team began to determine what else we could do to further reduce environmental and energy impacts. We decided to design the project based on USGBC LEED-NC v2.1. The owner chose not to go for Certification at this time, but we anticipated nearly a LEED Silver rating. In addition, we had the challenge of only employing strategies that would not add significant first costs, as the project had already been budgeted without sustainability as a feature. So, this process was good at vetting out what strategies would provide ‘best value’ in terms of balancing the goals of budget, durability, and sustainability. We realized we would not be able to afford some of the higher cost solutions, such as on-site renewable energy systems, and therefore looked towards efficiencies available in the integral systems we would need in a base project. One energy-saving system we employed was the use of Energy Recovery Ventilators (ERV’s). The two ERV’s we used were able to mitigate the outside supply air, of our hot and humid Florida climate, while also reducing cooling energy loads. This is because the air is pre-treated by the temperature and humidity difference of the return air. There were also benefits to IAQ in the way of ventilation effectiveness form the use of ERV’s. In terms of lighting, the entire project is designed with low-consumption, high-efficiency fixtures. This combined with all dark-sky friendly exterior fixtures, and the use of occupancy sensors on the interior, helped us achieve our goals. Materials through the project were specified with recycled content, rapidly renewable materials, certified wood, and low-emitting materials. Water conservation and quality in Florida is a major concern. This facility was built with waterless urinals which are anticipated to save 80,000 gallons of water per year. The low-consumption toilet flush valves use 45% less water than a standard fixture. Faucet sensors were used on all sinks for additional water savings. On the exterior, the team used all native and xeric landscaping as well as on-site water treatment systems to maximize the environmental benefits of our site design.