The House That Love Built - Leed Guide

Seeking solace on the roof of a parking deck sounds crazy. Unless you’re the worn out family of a desperately ill child being treated at San Diego-based Rady Children’s Hospital. Rady Children’s Hospital knows there’s nothing crazy about the temporary respite that will be afforded through the new 42,000-square-foot Ronald McDonald House, recently erected on the roof of the medical campus’ new six-story parking deck.

The need for the facility was clear. “With only 12 rooms in our current house, we had to turn away about 100 families per month, says Bill Lennartz, CEO of Ronald McDonald House of San Diego. “Parents want to be there for their children. Now we’ll be able to serve so many more families in a much more comprehensive manner.”

Few have understood that concept as well as Dave Christensen, the project’s general construction superintendent and a cancer survivor himself. He will never forget the grueling treatment that impacted not only him but his family as well.

“From the outset, this project has been a labor of love,” Christensen says. San Diego-based Barnhart Inc., a Heery International Company, committed to provide its construction services at cost and also promised to solicit donations and reduced fees from other project contractors. Barnhart estimated the total project cost to be $14 million. The goal was to give back 15 to 20 percent of the project’s costs through donations and reduced fees.

Looking Up

After several years of research, the Ronald McDonald House recognized there was no available land to expand outward. Instead, the Ronald McDonald House collaborated with Rady Children’s Hospital to look upward at a six-story parking deck that had already been planned on the campus. “One of the initial challenges we faced,” notes Barnhart Project Manager Chuck McArthur, “was making sure the structure could accommodate additional floors. The top deck is a post-tension slab. If you snap one cable, major structural issues could ensue. Working with San Diego-based architect Joseph Wong Design Associates (JWDA), the team realigned the building and re-engineered the structure to make sure all the plumbing and electrical conduits would penetrate the deck in the proper places.”

While creating a comforting environment at a Ronald McDonald House is critical to helping serve those families in need, the design and construction team took the concept of enhancing the environment one step further by targeting LEED certification. “Although the decision to target LEED wasn’t made at the outset, we had some advantages going in,” McArthur offers.

“One of those advantages was the fact that the facility is built on a previously existing site,” interjects JWDA Senior Architect Brian Hansen “Not only do we gain LEED points from using a previously disturbed site, we gain points from having no stormwater issues as a result of using the parking deck. The deck already had set aside space for carpool parking, bikes and low-emitting vehicles, which meet additional LEED criteria.”

Given hospital construction on one side of the street and a highway set directly beneath its hilltop location, Barnhart was limited in its ability to lay down materials. “We wound up having to walk up a lot of materials for lack of room,” McArthur says. “Despite the lack of room, every piece of trash went down a single chute where it was then transported to another facility for separation. We had one employee assigned specifically to keep the site clean, separate waste materials from recycling materials, and make sure no loose material found its way to the highway below. That was as much about safety as it was protecting the environment.”

The friendly façade consisting of metal studs and plaster feels like a village by design. Thoughts of the parking deck or proximity to the highway vanish from the moment visitors sign in at the contemporary, curvilinear registration area, which flows effortlessly into the great room and kitchen spaces. Here, guests are afforded the spacious luxury of being able to cook for their families on any one of six food preparation areas, or eat communally with food prepared for them in the specious commercial kitchen. The room exudes a certain warmth, due in great part to two ample walls of windows that allow natural light to permeate every nook and cranny. “Our goal was to create an oasis of calm for families and their children,” Hansen offers.

Environmental Amenities

A calming sense is exactly what families will find throughout the window-lined structure. Rather than design a facility that focuses outward on either the hospital or highway, JWDA opted to envelop guests in the warm embrace of two spacious courtyards, which provide natural light to 90 percent of the facility’s occupied spaces. The majority of guest rooms have operable windows that open onto them. “Dual-glazed sound-rated noise windows were specified to insulate guests from the noise of the highway,” McArthur adds. “These windows also reduce the building’s energy usage.”

Fresh air isn’t just a function of ample operable windows but 22,000 square feet of outdoor courtyard space. “On the south courtyard ‘play’ side there’s a half basketball court, 4 square and hop scotch courts, artificial turf, and climbing equipment. A second north courtyard, separated from the sports area by the great room and kitchen, is a designated quiet zone for guests who prefer to be more alone in their thoughts. It also houses a built-in outdoor barbecue and a concrete amphitheater that can be used for puppet shows and a host of other guest, administrative or hospital functions,” says Project Manager Robert Lombardi, president of 4G Development and Consulting, Inc. A series of CMU planters line both courtyards, some raised, some low to the ground to allow children an opportunity to garden and learn about low water use landscaping.

Other amenities in addition to the new, larger guestrooms include computer, fitness, laundry, TV, game, library and faith rooms, all of which take advantage of recycled materials, low-VOC paints, low-flow toilets and urinals, and high-efficiency lighting. “Rather than install HVAC package units on the roof, where it would be a maintenance nightmare, we opted to install a highly efficient, four-pipe hydronic system at ground level, seven stories down,” McArthur notes.

One area that could bump the facility to LEED Silver is a photovoltaic system to help the house generate its own solar energy. “We’ve stubbed the reflective roof for photovoltaic panels,” Hansen says. What we need now is a donor to help pay for the installation.” No one questions that donor will materialize because with so many vendors contributing time and resources, this is indeed, as the Ronald McDonald House slogan says, “the house that love built.”