![]() |
When rebuilding the observation tower, existing brick was taken down to a constant course, which allowed new brick to blend at the match line. |
For 38 years, the Pere Marquette Depot sat boarded up, broken down, and fire damaged. The Prairie-style building, with its distinctive orange iron-brick walls, was once the elegant Bay City, Mich., train station. The facility, which opened in 1904, served the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad Company when the area was the epicenter of lumber processing for the shipbuilding and kit homebuilding industries.
In 1953, the 9,300-sf depot underwent an atomic-age modernization to convert it into a Greyhound bus terminal. Classical features like the 66-foot-high observation tower, wraparound canopy, ornamental metal brackets, and porte-cochere were demolished. After the bus station closed in 1969, the property sat vacant for more than three decades.
It took the depot's owner, Great Lakes Center Foundation, from 2002 to 2005 to patch together $3.85 million from local, state, and national sources to begin an extensive but frugal renovation that would bring the building back to life as a community center run by the local Convention and Visitor's Bureau and as offices for the Bay Area Community Foundation.
The Building Team, headed by Quinn Evans | Architects of Ann Arbor, Mich., with local firms Gregory Construction as GC and MacMillan Associates Inc. as engineer, had a mess on its hands. The masonry walls were in decent shape, but the foundation was undermined and the interior was devastated by toxic pigeon guano and fire and water damage, which destroyed most of the ornamental plaster walls and ceilings. The mechanical equipment, boiler, piping, plumbing fixtures, light fixtures, and most of the wiring had been stripped.
The Building Team salvaged the wainscoting and most of the windows and doors, replaced missing tiled canopies, the Spanish clay tile roof, and the observation tower, and repositioned the depot for use as a twenty-first-century community and office building. Although the project did not seek LEED certification, recycled content, low-VOC materials, low-flow plumbing fixtures, radiant heating, and light-sensor controls were used.
“They've done a wonderful job with both the interior and exterior work,” said Reconstruction Awards judge David Callan, SVP Environmental Systems Design, Chicago. Fellow judge Ken Osmun, group president of construction at Wight & Co., Darien, Ill., marveled at the project's bang for the buck. “The budget was so low and they had to make the depot the focal point of the community. I can't imagine the challenges they had to overcome.” —Jay W. Schneider, Senior Editor
Related Stories
| Nov 16, 2010
Brazil Olympics spurring green construction
Brazil's green building industry will expand in the coming years, spurred by construction of low-impact venues being built for the 2016 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee requires arenas built for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro meet international standards for low-carbon emissions and energy efficiency. This has boosted local interest in developing real estate with lower environmental impact than existing buildings. The timing couldn’t be better: the Brazilian government is just beginning its long-term infrastructure expansion program.
| Nov 10, 2010
$700 million plan to restore the National Mall
The National Mall—known as America’s front yard—is being targeted for a massive rehab and restoration that could cost as much as $700 million (it’s estimated that the Mall has $400 million in deferred maintenance alone). A few of the proposed projects: refurbishing the Grant Memorial, replacing the Capitol Reflecting Pool with a smaller pool or fountain, reconstructing the Constitution Gardens lake and constructing a multipurpose visitor center, and replacing the Sylvan Theater near the Washington Monument with a new multipurpose facility.
| Nov 9, 2010
Designing a library? Don’t focus on books
How do you design a library when print books are no longer its core business? Turn them into massive study halls. That’s what designers did at the University of Amsterdam, where they transformed the existing 27,000-sf library into a study center—without any visible books. About 2,000 students visit the facility daily and encounter workspaces instead of stacks.
| Nov 3, 2010
Park’s green education center a lesson in sustainability
The new Cantigny Outdoor Education Center, located within the 500-acre Cantigny Park in Wheaton, Ill., earned LEED Silver. Designed by DLA Architects, the 3,100-sf multipurpose center will serve patrons of the park’s golf courses, museums, and display garden, one of the largest such gardens in the Midwest.
| Nov 3, 2010
Sailing center sets course for energy efficiency, sustainability
The Milwaukee (Wis.) Community Sailing Center’s new facility on Lake Michigan counts a geothermal heating and cooling system among its sustainable features. The facility was designed for the nonprofit instructional sailing organization with energy efficiency and low operating costs in mind.
| Nov 3, 2010
New church in Connecticut will serve a growing congregation
Tocci Building Companies will start digging next June for the Black Rock Congregational Church in Fairfield, Conn. Designed by Wiles Architects, the 103,000-sf multiuse facility will feature a 900-person worship center with tiered stadium seating, a children’s worship center, a chapel, an auditorium, a gymnasium, educational space, administrative offices, commercial kitchen, and a welcome center with library and lounge.
| Nov 2, 2010
Cypress Siding Helps Nature Center Look its Part
The Trinity River Audubon Center, which sits within a 6,000-acre forest just outside Dallas, utilizes sustainable materials that help the $12.5 million nature center fit its wooded setting and put it on a path to earning LEED Gold.
| Oct 13, 2010
Editorial
The AEC industry shares a widespread obsession with the new. New is fresh. New is youthful. New is cool. But “old” or “slightly used” can be financially profitable and professionally rewarding, too.
| Oct 13, 2010
Biloxi’s convention center bigger, better after Katrina
The Mississippi Coast Coliseum and Convention Center in Biloxi is once again open for business following a renovation and expansion necessitated by Hurricane Katrina.
| Oct 13, 2010
Tower commemorates Lewis & Clark’s historic expedition
The $4.8 million Lewis and Clark Confluence Tower in Hartford, Ill., commemorates explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark at the point where their trek to the Pacific Ocean began—the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.