Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, projects from Maine to Alabama to California continue to pursue SITES certification. Newly registered projects in 2020 include:
Colby College Gordon Center for the Creative & Performing Arts: Colby College is pursuing SITES for the grounds around its new center for arts and innovation, an exceptional performance and viewing space for theater, dance, music, and cinema studies that’s also a creative laboratory for the performing arts and multidisciplinary curriculum. This is Colby’s third SITES project, with its athletic fields already achieving the first SITES certification in New England.
Syme Residence Hall: NC State University in Raleigh, NC is honoring its 1916 Syme Residence Hall, a vibrant part of its history which has housed over 20,000 students over the last century, with renovated grounds built for SITES certification.
Huntsville New Courthouse: A new courthouse for the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Alabama, is being built by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) in Huntsville, AL. The GSA adopted SITES for its capital improvement program, having determined that SITES “offers a highly effective and efficient way to compel environmental performance and project efficiencies, including effective cost control, on various capital project types.”
Tuolumne and Groveland Community Resiliency Centers: Tuolumne County, CA registered two "Community Resilience Centers," which won a National Disaster Resilience Competition hosted by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The project will build on the tree planting and other restoration work already planned after the 2013 Rim fire, as well as creating fuel breaks to slow future fires, removing invasive plants and enhancing grazing land. The Rim was the biggest blaze in the Sierra Nevada’s recorded history, burning across 250,000 acres in the Stanislaus National Forest, Yosemite National Park and private land.
Feriton Spur Park : Feriton Spur Park is embedded within an almost six mile old railroad line through the heart of Kirkland, WA being transformed into an ”unmatched path for walking and biking, a stunning linear park, a site for future transit. This means places where people gather, a safe way to travel to a friend’s house, a speedy way to get to work, fun places for play and reflective spaces full of stillness.”
We are excited to see so many projects joining the SITES Community and we look forward to their completion and future achievement of Sustainable SITES certification. What’s the latest on sustainable landscapes in your communities? Email us!