Aliyya Swaby Photo
Nucci (center) flanked by Harp (left) and DeLauro (right).
At an open house Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Toni Harp and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro shared their memories of a historic 1929 building while celebrating its leap into the future.
The memories came as the Connection, a statewide not-for-profit offering social services to the community, showed the public recent state-funded energy efficient installments on its 48 Howe St. property, which it took over from the YMCA in 1997.
With $372,000 in bond money from the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, the agency installed two 10-kilowatt cogenerators, which provide part of the electricity and all of the hot water for the building, as well as a 200-kilowatt standby generator for emergencies.
The cogenerators will save at least 20 percent in electricity costs annually, according to Lou Rogowski, facility director. The total savings should exceed $40,000 per year, he said.
With additional state funding totaling $150,000 over the past four years, The Connection installed energy-efficient windows and a remote energy management system to control heat throughout the building from a central computer. Agency CEO Peter Nucci listed other additions, such as security upgrades and an energy-efficient air conditioning system.
“Little by little, we’ve been changing this building,” revamping an important city landmark, he said. His mother-in-law visited the site as a dancer for the United Services Organization in the 1940s.
DeLauro said she and her husband used to take her stepson to gymnastic classes back when the building belonged to the YWCA.
“We would have breakfast together while he did his gymnastics,” she said. “It’s a wonderfully historic place where you can relive what happened.”
The Connection houses several programs in the building, including a counseling center, women and children’s center, substance abuse intervention program and rehab program.
“The parallel here today is that you’ve given this facility a new lease on life,” DeLauro said. “But more importantly, you rejuvenate and bring peoples’ lives together that have found themselves in so many desperate situations.”
Mayor Harp called the agency’s green goals “admirable” and “compatible” with her focus on energy efficiency city-wide.
Later, Rogowski took DeLauro and Harp on an abbreviated tour of the 90,000-square-foot property, pointing out areas of both recent and planned repairs.
At the end of the tour, Harp asked Rogowski and project engineer Angelo Delucia for advice advancing a plan to install cogenerators in City Hall.
The ultimate goal is to pursue certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, a national system to rate structures and building operations on environmental sustainability. But the LEED certification process is expensive and complicated and will take a lot of time and planning to work up to, said David Kyle, the agency’s facilities manager.
“We detracted off the path recently, opting to put money into immediate energy conservation” and protection from natural disasters, he said.