College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, will build a new Center for Human Ecology. The college’s trustees voted unanimously to approve the $13 million project at their winter meeting.
It will be the college’s first new academic building since the 1980s. Back then the school had fewer than 200 students, while today enrollment is capped at about 350 to keep its small character.
The two-story building will cover about 29,000 square feet on the north end of campus, overlooking Frenchman Bay. Inside there will be science labs, lecture halls, faculty offices, art and design studios and a teaching greenhouse.
Built to use far less energy
The design follows strict energy standards. As a result, the college expects the center to use about 80 percent less energy than a similar building made with conventional design and materials.
Susan T. Rodriguez of New York City and GO Logic of Belfast, Maine, are the architects. E.L. Shea, Inc. of Ellsworth is expected to lead construction, which is set to start in spring 2019. Completion is planned by September 2020, although the plans still had to go before the town planning board on February 6.
The project is funded entirely by donations, and that includes an endowed budget for maintenance. Lead gifts came from trustees of the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund and from trustees of the college.
College President Darron Collins, a 1992 graduate, said the center will bring the sciences, arts and humanities under one roof. That suits the college’s hands-on, interdisciplinary way of teaching, he added.
The building may also start a wider reorganization of the campus. Later phases could turn the current arts and sciences building into a welcome center with admissions offices and add an experimental theater, an art gallery and a propagation greenhouse. Those steps depend on further fundraising. Founded in 1969, the college was named the top green college by The Princeton Review in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
