Waterfront Housing

State of the Art Affordable Housing

Waterfront Housing is a LEED certified affordable housing project with many environmentally sensitive design solutions, including a brownfield redevelopment on the Lake Champlain waterfront site.  Affordable housing is often an overlooked area for high quality design.  One of the main objectives of the project was to design beautiful architecture while at the same time balancing budget, environmental issues, site constraints, and people’s misperceptions about affordable housing.

The program includes forty mixed income apartments with underground tenant parking.  The building is oriented on the site to maximize views of the lake and solar heat gain.  The design is embedded into the hillside to create a communal courtyard and to lessen the scale of the four story residential building.

Select environmental features include:  

• All units provided with ducted fresh air via energy recovery ventilation system with economizer control of the enthalpy wheel
• Low and zero voc paints to enhance indoor air quality
• #2 grade hardwood flooring manufactured and extracted within 500 miles of project
• Entry walk off grates to enhance air quality
• Balconies and decks for most units
• Highly energy efficient building envelope
• Wood framed walls with 3” spray foam, 1 ½” polyisocyanurate insulation, and rain screen design with fiber cement siding
• Wood truss floors and roof with 6” polyisocyanurate insulation
• Air tight building, tested at 5000cfm at 50 Pa for the whole building
• Heating season air leakage rate of .05 air changes per hour
• Formaldehyde free acoustic batt insulation
• 95-97% recycled content underlayments.
• State of the art stormwater run off treatment system to protect Lake Champlain
• Dual flush toilets (.8 and 1.6 gallons per flush)
• Open air garage parking to minimize run off and avoid mechanical ventilation
• Estimated $500 per apartment per year reduction in energy costs over a similar building that meets code
• Close proximity to bus lines, bike path, regional railroad, and downtown Burlington
• Direct line of site to daylight for over 90% of occupied space