MSU’s Yellowstone Hall receives national recognition as LEED ‘Gold’ building

 

Yellowstone Hall, Montana State University’s first freshman residence hall to be built in half a century, has earned LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for energy-efficient and sustainable design and construction. Kristin Katchmar, right, a resident assistant at Roskie Hall, throws a disc before the ribbon cutting and grand opening of Yellowstone Hall on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016. MSU Photo by Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez

 
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By Anne Cantrell, MSU News Service
BOZEMAN — Yellowstone Hall, Montana State University’s first freshman residence hall to be built in half a century, has earned LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for energy-efficient and sustainable design and construction. The  building’s design means it is projected to cost significantly less per square foot to heat, cool and light than most other residence halls on campus, according to administrators with MSU’s Facilities Services.
“Managing the operating and maintenance costs of our facilities is critical to MSU’s financial stewardship obligation to the taxpayer, our students and their families,” said Dan Stevenson, associate vice president of University Services. “The LEED certification process allows MSU to verify, through a third party, that we are designing and constructing our buildings to standards necessary to achieve that stewardship.”
Among other design features, Yellowstone Hall features beetle-kill pine wood boards throughout the building and a solar wall to pre-heat hot water and help the university lower its utility bill.

 

 

MSU received points on the LEED rating system for numerous performance factors and design features of Yellowstone Hall, including the following:

• Diverting 96 percent of construction waste from the landfill.
• Using recycled materials for nearly 12 percent of the total building materials.
• Reducing potable water use by 42 percent in the building. Yellowstone Hall uses faucets that dispense .5 gallons of water per minute and showerheads that use 1 ½ gallons of water per minute, according to Duke Elliott, resource conservation specialist with MSU Facilities Services. Both methods use less water than traditional methods and result in significant water savings, Elliott said. In turn, those savings result in reduced costs for water and sewer and reduced energy needed to heat water. 
• Providing covered bicycle storage facilities to encourage alternative transportation use.
• Projected energy cost savings of more than 30 percent.
• Using regional materials (those manufactured and extracted within 500 miles of the project site) for more than 23 percent of the total building materials.

Yellowstone Hall opened this fall to 436 incoming freshman students.
The $34.5 million project was funded by proceeds from a 2013 bond and will be repaid with MSU Auxiliary Services revenues from student housing fees, according to Tom Stump, MSU director of Auxiliary Services. No tuition or legislature-appropriated tax dollars were used for the project, Stump said.
Langlas & Associates was the general contractor and the architect was SMA Architects of Helena, with NAC Architecture serving as consultants.
Yellowstone Hall is the fifth LEED-certified building on the MSU campus. MSU’s Cooley Laboratory, which opened in October 2012 after a renovation, earned LEED Gold certification; a renovated Gaines Hall received LEED Silver in 2011; Gallatin Hall, a suite-style residence hall, received LEED Gold in 2015; and Jabs Hall, home of the MSU Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship, earned LEED Gold in 2016.
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This story is available on the Web at: http://www.montana.edu/news/16628