North Attleborough Electric Department Operations Center
North Attleborough, Massachusetts

Located just outside a wetland zone on a ledge covered site, this building takes advantage of its sloping site. The main public activities are placed on the ground floor connecting the vehicle garage, warehouse space, lockers, and toilets. The upper floor, comprised of departmental offices, is accessible from the employee parking lot.

The garage space comprises about 50% of the total building area. The remainder is given to offices, engineering and maintenance functions. The garage is an eight bay, 25 foot tall structure that houses all maintenance trucks, trailers, and smaller vehicles. The offices include billing and payment sections, meeting and conference areas, mail handling areas, accounting offices, dispatcherÕs office, cafeteria, staff lockers, and restrooms.

The energy design of the building is based on the use of off-peak KWHs purchased by the department at a very low price. This energy is then used to develop ice for two ice storage tanks that are used with a 54 ton chiller system with a glycol solution. This system circulates cooled glycol through fan coils the building. It is expected that the total cost of the HVAC system will be paid back within 2.7 years.

The North Attleborough Electric Department requested an additional project from ARCADD to design a 7,000 sf pre-engineered warehouse building, which was added as an annex to the main building.