In March, I was proud to attend the City of New York Parks & Recreation Department's ribbon cutting ceremony for Marine Park's Carmine Carro Community Center in Brooklyn. The facility is named for neighborhood activist Carmine Carro who fought hard in his lifetime to see this project a reality. Marine Park is Brooklyn's largest park, and Carro was President of the park's civic association for 16 years.
Marine Park consists of 798 acres of grassland and salt marsh and is a protected Forever Wild preserve. Community and department leadership wanted the new community center to reflect the city's commitment to the environment. When certified, the center will be a LEED® Silver building, incorporating many energy-saving systems into its operation.
A Cylindrical Design that Maximizes Natural Light
Designed by NYC Park's in-house architects, the 8,000-square-foot building has a circular shape, and includes a cellar and ground floor with a high cathedral ceiling.
The upper part of the cylindrical walls is glass-paneled to maximize the building's natural light. The ground floor houses the community center, multipurpose room, office, classroom, dining room, kitchen, garage, and restrooms. The cellar contains the storage, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical rooms. The building is constructed using recycled materials. Solar photovoltaic cells are installed on the upper roof while the lower roof has a green roof with vegetation.
Designed to Operate Efficiently
Dewberry worked with NYC Parks, designing the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, structural, geothermal, and solar photovoltaic systems. Multiple state-of-the-art energy-efficient building design options were included in the facility.
Working with our geothermal sub-consultant Water Energy Distributors, Inc., we developed the open loop geothermal heating and cooling system, which includes two geothermal supply wells with submersible pumps, two diffusion wells, and four ground source heat pumps. (See diagram.) The HVAC system has two air handling units equipped with heat recovery wheels, VAV boxes, fan coil units, radiant floor heating, unit heaters, and exhaust fans for the restrooms and kitchen. An electric boiler supplements the geothermal heating system, when needed; and the HVAC control system includes Demand-Controlled Ventilation using carbon dioxide sensors and a state-of-the-art building management system (BMS).
The electrical system includes high efficiency lighting, energy-saving lighting control system with daylight saving dimming controllers, occupancy sensors, and photocells. The 9 KW solar photovoltaic array on the upper roof is equipped with utility net metering to offset the facility energy bill. Also a full coverage fire alarm system is provided.
Water-saving, motion-detecting plumbing devices are used throughout the facility. The building is also equipped with a complete sprinkler system and kitchen hood fire suppression system.