PORTLAND, Maine — The University of Southern Maine could have erected just about any building on the site occupied by the new McGoldrick Center for Career & Student Success, and it would have been an improvement. What had been there before, in the heart of the Portland campus, was a parking lot.
But USM wanted to construct a building that made an aesthetic statement, provided a new hub for campus activity, and demonstrated the university’s commitment to sustainability. The McGoldrick Center succeeds on all three counts.
“I love this building,” Christopher Parelius, a USM graduate assistant, said. “I think it’s taken a sort of non-place—a parking lot, a very utilitarian-looking building—and it’s turned it into an amazing urban space.”
On the day we visited recently, the building was humming with activity. It contains a student lounge, dining hall, university store, auditorium and other rooms, all in a structure that makes dramatic use of massed timber. The wood gives the space a Maine look, a Maine feel.
What may be even more impressive is how energy efficient and environmentally friendly the building is. With passive solar heating, water-efficient fixtures, a focus on indoor air quality and more, it’s been awarded LEED Gold certification. In the long run, those features will save the university millions of dollars in heating and cooling costs.
Next door stands another new building, Portland Commons, the first dormitory the Portland campus has ever had. It is even more environmentally friendly than the McGoldrick Center, using 30 to 50 percent less energy than a typical modern building.
None of this happened by chance. USM has gone out of its way to promote sustainability with these new additions to its campus, and that’s not automatic for an institution where money is always tight.
“We’re a regional public university,” USM Director of Sustainability Aaron Witham said. “If we can figure out how to do this, then we hope everyone can because this should be the new modern way we build buildings.”