The Elliot at Rivers Edge Grand Opening, April 2011
View photo gallery: http://gallery.pictopia.com/unionleader/gallery/116563/
Thomas Roy/Union Leader Elliot 3/29/11There is a grand two-story view of the reception area in Elliot at Rivers Edge, which will be fully open on April 18th.
The Elliot at River's Edge
MANCHESTER, NH: A crowd of over 1,300 people gathered at The Elliot at River’s Edge to celebrate the Grand Opening of this 236,000 square foot healthcare facility. Doug Dean, President & CEO, led the festivities and told his physicians and staff, “The future of The Elliot at River’s Edge is now in your capable hands.” He praised their skill and expertise as healthcare providers and remarked on his confidence relating to the patients and the experience they will now have in the new state-of-the art facility.
“I keep telling everyone that The Elliot at River’s Edge is a movement. It is a movement because this is the most pivotal moment the State of New Hampshire will see in healthcare for years to come. This outpatient care facility is the best model for providing preventative and proactive healthcare for the community. Services will be accessed easily, and we will reduce the number of people who need overnight care in a hospital,” explained Dean.
As of Monday, April 18th, the entire facility, including Urgent Care, for non-life threatening accidents, illnesses, and injuries is open to the public. “No longer do people need to use an emergency department to see a doctor. All of those physical illnesses and accidents creating some injury that you know needs treatment, can be taken care of by the same board certified ER doctors more efficiently, effectively, and for less in Urgent Care,” explained Dean.
Outside the front doors, Dick Anagnost, developer, unveiled a monument in the shape of the State of New Hampshire. On it reads: “Built for New Hampshire by New Hampshire.” Anagnost remarked about the jobs created from the construction of River’s Edge and the positive economic impact being experienced in Manchester from the site.
The Elliot at River’s Edge includes Urgent Care, Elliot 1-Day Surgery Center, Diagnostic Imaging, Pulmonary Medicine and Pulmonary Rehab, Physical Rehab, Endoscopy, Gastroenterology, Rehabilitation Services, Occupational Medicine, the Elliot Breast Health Center, Outpatient Cardiac Care, Pain Management, Laboratory services, Orthopedic Surgical Specialists, General Surgical Specialists, The Wound Center & Hyperbaric Medicine, Coumadin Clinic, and support services.
Valet parking, parking garage, greeters, gift shop, ATM, reflection areas, Café and Internet Café all round out this patient friendly facility.
The Grand Opening celebration was attended by state and local dignitaries, major donors to The Elliot, community and business leaders, construction teams, as well as Elliot physicians and staff.
http://www.hopkintonindependent.com/admin/current.pdf
April 7, 2011
“The goal is to create two smaller neighborhoods supported by a central common green. The clubhouse ties it together, and creates a community as a whole,” said Brian O’Connor of CUBE 3 Studios, Lawrence-based architecture fi rm. He was speaking to the Design Review Board at the March 22 meeting as he introduced plans for the Southwest Village of the Legacy Farms development. The site for the Southwest Village is 18 acres total, including 6.4 acres of restricted land.
CUBE 3 Studios is working in conjunction with Wood Partners of Concord, MA., an Atlanta-based multi-family investment firm and the builders for the project. With 15 offices across the country, Wood Partners has extensive experience and is an industry leader in green development. Said Vice President Adelaide Grady, “we aim to create a development with energy star standards that fi s well with the standards set here. We are sensitive to the site itself and the architectural heritage (of Hopkinton).”
Stephen Derdiarian, Director of Landscape Architecture Design at VHB, Inc., explained the plan to preserve significant areas of existing trees, predominantly oak; and utilize xeriscaping– that is landscaping with native plant materials not requiring a lot of irrigation. Native shrubs like swamp azaleas, mountain laurels and ornamental grasses will lend themselves well to the design, according to Derdiarian. The team is also interested in preserving the rustic, lichen-covered stonewalls on the landscape, as well as saving existing glacial boulders.
In the context of the Southwest Village, the two “neighborhoods,” O’Connor introduced, consist of seven total apartment buildings, three floors high. A key point is that each building is created from three smaller buildings or pods. “Creating a series of building that go together gives us the ability to work with the landscape, explained O’Connor, citing the grading of the landscape as a particular challenge.
Sensitive to Hopkinton’s “strong rural character” and classic nature of the town’s architecture, the exterior building design could integrate stone base, vertical siding and varying sizes of windows. “We’d like to minimize the appearance of mass,” O’Connor explained. “We want a lot of articulation because we want them to feel like home,” he explained, as color, material and texture impacts the design process. The planned centerpiece of the community will be a 5-6,000 sq. ft. clubhouse equipped with typical amenities. These could include a fitness center, social space with kitchen, business center and outdoor pool. The ample parking plan allows for 408 spaces, some of them covered.
The Design Review Board (DRB), upon hearing the plans, was generally pleased. Chairman Jeanette Thomson commended the team, “You’ve done a nice job at beingsensitive to what exists now – and the sensitivities of playing off a residential feel and making it look like home.” Although Thomson was also pleased with the team’s vision to keep the visual massing down, Finley Perry, DRB’s newest member, was not completely satisfied. “My concern is that it is still a 45 ft. tall apartment building,” he commented, challenging the team to consider 2 ½ floors instead of 3. Grady explained the need for the height, as it provides for a thermal envelope, creating energy efficiency. DRB member Jeffrey Doherty, also a representative for the Open Space Preservation Committee, thought the team’s effort to save existing trees was fantastic and voiced concern that they make a concerted effort to flag species prior to construction.
The entire site plan submittal for the Southwest Village is posted in the Planning Board section of the town’s web-site: http://www.hopkinton.org/
Legacy Farms Road Site
April 6, 2011
CUBE 3 Studio is pleased to announce the CVS Caremark Marketing Support Center has been awarded LEED certification.
CVS Caremark Marketing Support Center
The LEED® green building certification program is a voluntary, consensus-based national rating system for buildings designed, constructed and operated for improved environmental and human health performance. LEED addresses all building types and emphasizes state-of-the- art strategies in five areas: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials and resources selection, and indoor environmental quality. More at http://www.usgbc.org/
LEED Certification is important because it helps designers employ green strategies that not only help sustain the environment but it also benefits the building owners financially and the tenants health, psychological wellbeing and overall comfort.
CVS Caremark Marketing Support Center achieved Certified level (28 points), LEED for New Construction v2.2, it is a building renovation and addition, approx. 55,000 sf, open and closed office plans, entire conferencing center.
Specific LEED items of note:
This is second CVS Caremark building to be awarded LEED certification. The Retail Pharmacy Customer Care Center was also awarded Gold level certification. More >
http://hopkinton.patch.com/articles/hopkintons-legacy-farms-aims-for-fall-2012
By Gene Cassidy | Email the author | April 5, 2011
With 3 Planning Board meetings left before town elections possibly change the makeup of decision-makers for Part 1 of Hopkinton’s signature project, developers say ‘Yeah, we’ve got that.’
Members of Hopkinton’s Legacy Farms development team expect to have approval from the town for Southwest Village, the first phase of the 940-unit, smart-growth development before Hopkinton’s May 16 elections.
“There’s nothing I’ve heard here tonight that makes me think we can’t get this done by then,” Steven Zieff, part of the Baystone Development team, told a joint meeting of the Hopkinton Planning Board and Hopkinton Conservation Commission Monday night, April 4.
If the approvals come through, people would start moving into apartments at Legacy Farms in fall 2012.
Southwest Village’s 240 apartments, clubhouse and pool would be finished by spring 2013, representatives for Legacy Farms said last night.
Legacy Farms’ low-impact plan will concentrate still-to-come retail and single-family-house plans on small portions of the site.
Legacy Farms smart-growth concept has won multiple design awards and met the approval of town officials and residents who want the 700 acres of former plant and shrub nurseries, ponds, forest and trails to remain as natural as it can. Seventy percent of the site will be open space, developers say.
A representative from Cube 3 architects showed photos of the types of houses Legacy developers had considered when looking for appropriate styles to fit the Hopkinton landscape.
Many of them had the woodsy color and shape of tasteful ski houses in Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine. Cube 3’s job, particularly with the multi-unit apartments in Southwest Village, is to render that style in larger buildings.
Cube 3′s Brian O’Connor explained that color, texture and broken roof lines will prevent the large complex from dwarfing the scale of nearby homes on Curtis Road.
A representative for land engineers Vanasse Hangen Brustlin said the site would be planted with native trees including red oaks, red maples and Ash. The tumbledown stone walls on the site would be creatively re-used, he said.
In one corner, the village slightly encroaches on a wetlands buffer. A groundwater specialist from wastewater consultants Tata & Howard said it is the best way to preserve key landscape features, especially nearby woods and a knoll that relieves the level landscape.
The complex will have a large, centrally located trash compactor, which will require some tenants to wheel or drive their trash across the parking lot. Several on the development team said this was preferable to a screened Dumpster near each building.
The finished village will be lit by LED lights which offer a concentrated beam with little diffusion. The technology is new enough that there was a bit of back-and-forth between developers and board members about light levels. According to the VHB spokesman, LED lights will not intrude on apartment residents or neighbors.
There is also little storage space built into the complex for what Planning Board member Claire Wright called people’s “inevitable accumulation of stuff.”
As the presentation started, Planning Board Chairman Joe Markey congratulated Zieff and by extension lead developer Roy MacDowell Jr., who watched from the back of the meeting room.
“This is consistent with what your conception has been over the last few years,” Markey said.
April 6, 2011 – by Mark Collins, Staff Reporter
The Legacy Farms project moved one step closer to reality on Tuesday night. Speaking at a March 4th public forum at Town Hall, project manager Steven Zieff, working with the project developer and architect, presented elevation and site plans for the first stage of the development.
Speaking to the Planning Board, the Conservation Commission, and the forum audience, Zieff said, “We started here four years ago, now we’re discussing a fully engineered site”.
Following that comment, Zieff turned the floor over to Wood Partners Vice President of Development Adelaide Grady. Grady outlined her firm’s development strategy to create a project with a compact development footprint in the south west corner of the Legacy Farm project.
The structures being developed will be one and two bedroom apartments designed in a campus-like site layout. The 240-unit complex, including 60 affordable housing units, will have a strong commitment to energy efficiency according to Grady.
Grady also addressed the community aspect of the project when she talked about the extensive pedestrian connectivity encompassing sidewalks, trails, and paths to the Legacy Farms Road South. The project will also harmonize with the existing topography and will minimize the visual impact of the buildings.
Following Grady, Brian O’Conner, Partner of the architectural firm Cube3 Studio, outlined the building designs and how they relate to the topology. Specifying the location, O’Conner said the project will be 500 feet from the closest abutter on Curtis Road. On the north end, the site is heavily vegetated. On the south side the site is bordered by a large expanse of ledge and rock that, according to O’Conner, “add a lot of character to the site”.
As Grady had also mentioned earlier, O’Conner commented that the compact footprint would provide a real community feel to the site. The three story buildings would follow site contours that would minimize any site disturbances. This would, according to O’Conner, create an aesthetic that would identify with the rural location and agricultural heritage of the area.
When viewed from Curtis Road, the building would present its shorter side to neighbors. Minimal driveways and stepped foundations that follow the lay of the land will also reduce much of the visual impact according to O’Conner. To further soften the images of the structures, the Landscape Architects will plant a large number of native plants throughout the project. Exterior building and landscape illumination will come from high efficiency LED lighting that will minimize light pollution.
But, the project plan does require some work in a wetlands buffer zone. Wetlands Scientist Dave Picard said the project is virtually surrounded by wetlands. As a result, the design will require work in 22,000 square feet of the buffer zone, with 2,600 square feet being an impervious structure.
Conservation Commission Chair Bob Murphy said there could be some flexibility in enforcing the wetlands by-laws, but Commission member Franck D’Urso thought the plan might not impact the buffer zone if some of the buildings site plans could be reconfigured to sidestep the buffer zones. Responding to D’Urso’s comments, Adelaide Grady commented that the design would be compromised and would not work if the building were moved to avoid any buffer zone work. It was also noted that the proposed disturbances to the wetlands buffer zone had already been done by Weston Nurseries.
Two other minor points of contention were raised by the Planning Board. The first one was raised by Ken Weismantel.
“Let’s talk trash,” said Weismantel.
Weismantel expressed some concern over the adequacy of a single trash disposal area. For the size of the development, Weismantel asked Wood Partners if they should consider another trash collection area that would better serve the residents farthest from the single collection site. Grady responded that one disposal area was common for a development of this size. She also mentioned a scenario where residents would, as they left for work in the morning, place a trash bag on their vehicle and drive over to the trash receptacle.
Claire Wright also raised a question about the illumination levels called for in the lighting plan. Referencing lighting recently installed on the Town Common, Wright suggested the illumination levels should be lowered to levels currently used there because they provided a less disturbing light favored by the neighbors.
Concluding the hearing, Planning Board Chair Joe Markey expressed his approval of the plans presented by the developers and architects.
“I’m happy you’re committed to the same design that you originally presented to us before” said Markey, “and I suspect your Curtis Road neighbors appreciate your design efforts.”
The current project schedule calls for an April 15th start for the project roadway with a five month build time.
Construction of the first unit will begin in the fall of 2011. The 18 month build time will have the first units finished in the fall of 2012 and the project complete in the spring of 2013.
The public hearing is still open and will be continued at the next scheduled Planning Board meeting on Monday, April 11.
Hopkinton Legacy Farms Front Elevation
Learn more about the house remodel project for the Tucker family on the BellaTucker.org website:
