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After an 18-month construction process, employees of Hampton Roads Transit in Virginia last year were finally able to walk onto their new Southside Operations Campus. Those same employees are now watching eagerly as the campus’ fourth building is under construction and scheduled to be completed in 2012. 

The 9.8-acre campus currently houses approximately 236,000 square feet of building space divided between three structures that were all completed in June 2011. An 80,932-square-foot primary maintenance facility; an 18,065-square-foot fuel island and bush wash facility and a 137,132-square-foot parking deck – which houses the buses underneath and employee vehicles above – are all up and fully functional. 

The final building, which will join the campus next April, is a 43,000-square-foot administrative building that will house 120 employees. The entire campus is a $71 million construction effort to replace its century-old campus originally built to house trolley cars. Because of its aged design, it was impossible to renovate the existing buildings to current standards. Hampton Roads Transit (HRT) decided everything must go.

“The old facility had outlived its usefulness,” HRT explains. “Sections were more than 100 years old and were designed in an age of trolleys. Inadequate lighting, heating and cooling made work conditions poor. [There were] not enough bays to accommodate HRT’s existing bus fleet maintenance needs. Design shortcomings made it impossible to work on diesel electric hybrid buses. It did not meet terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act and could not be renovated.” 

Also, the entrances to the main garage bus bays were too small for its more modernly designed buses and storage room was inadequate. In essence, the old campus was holding HRT back. 

The department entered a public-private partnership made possible by Virginia’s Public Private Education Act. It has worked out an arrangement with developer Concord Eastridge, Inc. (CEI), a nationally recognized developer of public-private and mixed-use developments. Through the partnership, CEI has assembled a design and construction team to redevelop HRT’s existing property, which lies along a major thoroughfare in the city. CEI will transform the current property into a mixed-use development.

The construction team led by HRT Project Manager Daniel Hassett will deliver a LEED Silver campus, and HRT’s Engineering and Facilities Officer Sibyl Pappas says the campus may possibly achieve LEED Gold through what she describes as “less-sexy but still very efficient” sustainable features. 

Transforming a lot adjacent to a cemetery into a highly efficient, semi-industrial operation is difficult, but it is being achieved through the constant attention to detail, Pappas explains. Everything from the handling of water to the use of recycled materials drives that decision. “With our bus wash facility, we wash almost 100 percent of our fleet every night,” Pappas explains. “So we have a 50,000-gallon underground storage tank for collecting rain water and we use it as fresh bus-wash water. We also have a green roof on part of the administrative building to address stormwater quality and quantity.” 

The project also includes an HVAC system, which uses 30 percent less energy than the old one. The construction team also will use an extensive amount of recycled materials for items such as the ceiling tiles. But the project’s sustainable measures don’t stop on the types of materials and systems installed – it also applies to the methods used to construct the building. 

“The old buildings on the site dated back to 1900,” Pappas explains. “We have crushed the old buildings, which were made out of brick and concrete and made them into gravel. We used it as the sub-base for the pavement that covers the entire site. The surface of the site is concrete, because buses tend to tear up asphalt. But underneath that concrete and the entire site is 6 inches of the old building. So we are using the old campus as the foundation for the new campus.”

The sub-base, however, is about the only thing that will remain from the previous campus. The new design includes features that will not only make the campus more energy-efficient, but will make all of HRT’s operations more efficient in general. 

For instance, the precast concrete parking structure is tall enough to house buses underneath the deck to keep them clean after being washed, and employees can park their cars on the deck itself. The new maintenance garage is fitted with individual spot coolers located where the back of the buses are parked, which is where the buses’ engines are housed. Now when workers perform maintenance they can adjust the spot coolers to their preferred comfort level. Another key improvement is the inclusion of a loading dock for shipping and receiving. 

“In a facility that had many design problems, shipping and receiving stood out as unique,” Pappas says. “We had a shipping and receiving area in a two story building but there was no elevator,” Pappas explains. “We had to receive deliveries pretty far away from the inventory area and then they had to be carried to wherever they were needed. Storing material on the second floor required each item to be hand carried up the stairs. In addition, we didn’t even have a loading dock. Now we have more than one loading dock and a modern shipping and receiving area.” 

A Progressive Team

The team behind this construction project was formed by developer Concord Eastridge, Inc. W.M. Jordan was selected as the general contractor, Parsons Brinckerhoff is the architect of record and AECOM was contracted as the project’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractor. 

Hampton Roads Transit is confident in its design and construction team, however Pappas explains the organization is not a silent partner in the venture. “We have someone onsite every day,” she explains.

Pappas says the entire team has done an excellent job in constructing the administrative building safely while the rest of the campus is in operation. The 9.8-acre site is busy seven days a week with employees and buses coming to and leaving the campus. On such a busy site, close coordination has been vital to keep things moving smoothly. 

“They are all doing a really great job of keeping the project moving,” Pappas explains. “We have some typical construction challenges, but they are such a great team and have dealt with each issue as it arises to keep things progressing.”