USFS goes for gold

SANDPOINT — The U.S. Forest Service is celebrating the grand opening of its new Sandpoint Ranger District Office on Wednesday.

The event lasts from 4-6 p.m. and includes a guided tour and remarks by Idaho Panhandle National Forests Supervisor Ranotta McNair and Sandpoint District Ranger Dick Kramer. Light refreshments will be provided.

The new building is located at 1602 Ontario St.

The district office was formerly located in the ground floor of the former Federal Building, which was acquired by the county and rechristened the Bonner County Administration Building.

Federal legislation advanced by former U.S. Sen. Larry Craig in 2000 enabled the Forest Service to sell the Federal Building in order to raise funds to build a new office on property the agency already owned on the north side of U.S. Highway 2. Construction was also funded through the sale of a Forest Service parcel to the Priest Lake Sanitation District.

The final cost of the construction is estimated at about $3.2 million.

The 13,325-square-foot building is more than three times smaller than the former office space and is designed and constructed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, an internationally recognized green building certification system.

Buildings earn certifications by improving energy savings, water efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions.

The new district ranger’s office is the first such Forest Service office in the Northern Rockies to be LEED certified. Agency standards call for a silver LEED certification, but Kramer said the district is aiming higher.

“It looks like it’s going to be gold,” Kramer said, referring to the second-highest rating. Platinum is the highest certification.

A draft case study on the project forecasts energy costs and water savings of more than 40 percent.

The building is a blend of contemporary design touches in Sandpoint (local flagstone and hand-peeled timbers) and existing World War II-era buildings already on the site, which feature Dutch hip roofs.

The building also has five cupolas cut to mimic traditional mountaintop fire lookouts. The cupolas are used to admit light.

“We were trying to get in as much ambient light as possible,” said Kramer.

The natural lighting is augmented by high-efficiency indoor lighting that automatically dims and brightens depending on ambient light conditions.

Ground source heat pumps provide heating and cooling by rejecting or extracting heat from a series of underground loops. Thirteen zones in the building each have a heat pump in the crawlspace, which allows more efficient indoor climate control.

Even glues and paints used in construction have low levels of volatile organic compounds. Specially coated roofing panels manage to repel sunlight in summer and absorb it during winter.

Ninety-seven percent of the work spaces in the office have window views and the interior is accented with smaller diameter lengths of timber.

“We wanted to bring some of the outside inside,” Kramer said.