The Gateway Center offers a new hub for the campus while giving visitors a snapshot of what ESF represents.
This high-performance building provides a centerpiece for campus activities, explores financially feasible and technologically sound strategies to operate using renewable energy, produces its own power, demonstrates a carbon-neutral facility, and conserves resources in innovative ways.
The Gateway Center offers a space for students to gather and socialize. The Trailhead Café serves a wide menu. Food, study and socializing can be enjoyed on a green roof with seating areas, as well a throughout a large open concourse with tables and chairs. The Center is also home to the ESF bookstore, exhibition space for specimens from the College's Roosevelt Wildlife Collection, and spacious conference and event facilities.
Designed to achieve a U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification, the Gateway Center features a novel combined heat-and-power (CHP) system made up of two complementary components. A biomass-fueled system produces high-pressure steam to drive a steam turbine and generate electricity, while a set of three natural gas-fired microturbines that provide a balance of electricity and steam for heating.
The CHP system provides the Gateway Center and four other campus buildings with both thermal and electrical energy, meeting 65 percent of campus heating and 20 percent of campus electrical needs, while reducing the campus-wide carbon footprint by 22 percent. It is a major component of ESF's Climate Action Plan.
The Gateway Center also features a green roof that uses native plant species from eastern Lake Ontario dunes and alvar pavement barrens at the northeastern end of Lake Ontario. Planting media depths of 6 to 18 inches supports larger plants, even woody plants, and provide extra insulation for the building. The green roof serves as both a research and demonstration project, providing designers and ecologists with knowledge about how well these native species from marginal but natural plant communities can serve as alternatives to sedums for green roof installations. Highly visible and accessible to visitors, the green roof demonstrates the unique qualities of the institution. It serves as a distinctive landscape and a symbol that ESF implements what it teaches into its programs.