Baltimore Clinic Earns Platinum Certification

BALTIMORE — Featuring rain gardens, a heat recovery wheel, and natural lighting in 75 percent of its offices, the Highlandtown Healthy Living Center medical office building now also proudly displays a LEED Platinum placard.

 

The newly opened 32,000-square-foot clinic, part of the Baltimore Medical System, one of six such centers operated by BMS, offers patient care and education to approximately 22,000 people in around Highlandtown – an East Baltimore neighborhood.

 

“We are using the environmentally friendly and LEED-required elements of the Healthy Living Center to educate our patients about how they can improve their health through their physical space,” says Jay Wolvovsky, BMS President and CEO. “For example, we don’t hang curtains in the windows of the center in order to illustrate the importance of sunlight, and to remove a trigger for asthma that our patients might find in their homes."

 

Staffers at the new facility use environmentally safe cleaning products and are educated in the building’s sustainable features, so that they can easily discuss the benefits with patients and staff.

 

Onsite at the Healthy Living Center are bike racks, employee showers and changing areas. Much of the interior furniture is reclaimed or refurbished and most newly purchased furniture is made of recycled content. Additionally, the facility’s 51 exam rooms feature tables made of recycled steel. The wooden ceiling beams and trim that runs throughout the building was reclaimed from a local barn that was torn down. Low-VOC carpeting and small squares of recycled cork flooring, which reduces noise and can be replaced in pieces creating less landfill waste, make up the floors. 

 

Approximately 88 percent of unused construction debris was recycled in building the center. A street level terraced healing garden and a front entrance rain garden both offer natural settings and rainwater filtering. Atop the building, a white membrane roof reduces heat island effect.

 

Energy-saving features includes lighting with motion detectors, a highly efficient HVAC system designed to reduce energy costs by $16,000 per year, and a heat recovery wheel that recycles the air and monitors interior and exterior temperatures to adjust accordingly.