Renewal and Renewables Are at Heart of New Home for Boston Treatment Center
By Caitlin Jones
5 min read
Tax Credit Advisor, August 2009: Hope House, a nonprofit residential treatment center for male alcoholics and substance abusers in Boston’s South End, is a renewable facility in several ways.
The new, relocated complex is a place where alcoholics and substance abusers address their issues and rebuild their lives.
At the same time, the new facility is a green building that relies heavily on renewable energy, through geothermal and solar energy systems.
Hope House, founded in 1955, previously operated out of five old buildings at three locations cobbled together over the years. On April 1, it moved into a new home in the Roxbury neighborhood, a 35,000-square-foot, four-story residential treatment center comprised of an interconnected new building and renovated existing building. The new facility provides housing for residents, amenities, program space, and administrative space.
Hope House has two components. One is an 80-bed “Recovery Home” where clients reside and participate in the four- to six-month treatment program. The second part is a “Graduate Home,” which consists of 22 units of affordable single-room occupancy (SRO) apartments occupied by graduates of Hope House’s treatment program and of similar other treatment programs in the state. These SRO residents pay 30% of their income each month; state housing vouchers subsidize the rest.
The roughly $15 million project had various funding sources, including dollars generated by the federal new markets tax credit.
Hope House Executive Director Thomas Duffly said the organization was “crowded” in its operations at its previous buildings but made them work. “But it was obvious when I took over as executive director 10 years ago,” he said, “that we needed better space, more efficient space, so that we could expand our program, do more for the graduates, and do more education and substance abuse treatment.”
Hope House, which embarked on its quest for a new facility four years ago, had a feasibility analysis prepared, and later purchased the property for its new complex. The new facility was designed by Mostue & Associates Architects, Inc., of Somerville, Mass.
Architect Clifford Boehmer, a principal of Mostue & Associates, reported that the design presented several challenges. One was that business leaders in the new neighborhood, an industrial and commercial section, didn’t want a building that looked residential. “They wanted the building to appear to be commercial in use,” he said. The motivation was to preserve the area as mostly industrial/commercial.
Architect Sharon MacNulty, of Mostue & Associates, said the facility’s exterior was designed with an industrial appearance. The grouping of windows and grid overlays make the building appear to have many, very large windows, just like those in industrial buildings. Inside, however, the reality is fewer and smaller windows, which provide a residential feel for residents and staff. “They’re trying to balance the more industrial feel to fit in with the neighborhood,” says MacNulty, “with a more intimate residential feel so that the men who live there [are] able to call it home for the time they [are] there.
Geothermal, Solar Systems
The new facility is very energy efficient, sustainable, and utilizes two renewable energy sources.
“We decided to build a green building,” says Duffly, “so that we could cut our expenses over the long term and do some good for the environment.” He cited, for instance, the use of waterless urinals, “environmentally friendly” materials, and geothermal and solar energy systems.
The geothermal system provides all the heating and air conditioning for the complex, negating the need for a conventional, natural gas-burning boiler system to supply heat.
The concept behind a geothermal system is that the temperature of the earth below four or five feet from the surface is fairly constant year round – warmer than the surface air temperature in winter and cooler in summer.
The way a geothermal system works is that one or more holes – “wells” – are drilled into the earth, vertically or horizontally. MacNulty said the two wells for Hope House – they cost $30,000 apiece – are 1,200 to 1,500 feet deep. Water is circulated by pumps through an enclosed pipe system that runs into the earth, bringing back cooler water in summer and warmer water in winter. Heated or cooled air is then distributed through the building.
“We’re bringing up an ambient temperature – 49-, 50-degree water – from 1,500 feet down,” says Duffly.
MacNulty said geothermal systems can be installed in buildings “almost anywhere.” Boehmer said a typical restraint is whether there is enough site area to accommodate the wells and access to them. Each well is capped by a manhole-like cover typically located on the ground outside the building.
Use of geothermal reduces the utility bills for a building for heating and air conditioning. But a downside is that electric bills are higher, because of the extra power consumed to constantly run the pumps that circulate the water.
At Hope House, this extra cost was offset by installing a solar photovoltaic (PV) energy system – solar panels and companion equipment – that generates electricity. This solar-generated electricity helps supply part of the total power used by Hope House, thereby reducing the facility’s electric bill. Duffly said the solar PV system generates an average 33.5 kilowatts of power daily.
MacNulty noted a geothermal system typically makes economic sense only if it will provide air conditioning as well as heating for a building.
Duffly said pretty much the entire cost of the geothermal and PV solar systems was paid for with grants received from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and utility rebates.
Funding Sources
The Hope House project tapped multiple funding sources. Sales proceeds from the old buildings covered about a third of the cost. In addition, there were funds received from the state and from the city, green grants and rebates, and capital generated by the federal new markets tax credit (NMTC).
The NMTC allocation was provided by a community development entity – AI Wainwright LLC – that was a joint venture of Affirmative Investments, of Boston, and Wainwright Bank and Trust Co.
The new markets investor in the deal was US Bancorp Community Development Corporation.
