The Town of Middlebury had used the former High School for its Town Offices since 1961. The Municipal Gym, built in 1934 as a WPA project, was attached to the old High School and had surpassed its useful life. Studies had been conducted over a 20 year period to determine whether to renovate the existing structures, rebuild on site, or build new facilities on other sites in Town.

Bread Loaf was selected to study an option to build a new Town Hall on a downtown site and a new Recreation Center next to existing playing fields outside of downtown. Our first phase of services focused on developing building programs, conceptual designs and a total project budget to be presented to the community. After approval by voters, Bread Loaf was retained to provide Design/Build services for both projects.

The new 10,300 sf Town Hall is a two-story, efficient, modern building and is designed as an abstraction of the architectural context of historic downtown Middlebury. The building is highly flexible and features a passive solar, south facing lobby and a large meeting room that can be reconfigured to accommodate many different meeting sizes and configurations. An outdoor public plaza helps to activate the downtown.

The Town of Middlebury Town Office building is the first municipal building in Vermont to be Net Zero ready for its energy usage. The building features an air source heat pump system for heating and cooling, eliminating the need for any fossil fuel use in the building. The building relies entirely on a locally installed photovoltaic array that will generate more power than the building will use. A super tight and highly insulated building envelope will allow the new facility to weather the extremes of the Vermont climate with ease. Advanced building envelope and mechanical systems commissioning were employed to ensure that building systems were installed and will operate according to the strict performance criteria set for this cutting edge building.

• Super insulated and air tight envelope
• Passive solar heating
• Natural daylighting of all work and public spaces and ventilation
• Exterior solar shading to reduce glare and summer solar heat gain
• Air to air heat pump system for mechanical system utilizing no fossil fuels
• Energy monitoring display in public lobby
• Net Zero ready building
• Insulating interior shades
• Indigenous plantings
• LED light fixtures with occupancy control
• Water conserving plumbing fixtures
• Sourcing of local materials and craftsmen
• Materials with high recycled content
• Highly durable materials
• Low VOC’s and formaldehyde free material
• Minimal construction waste practices
• Collaboration with Efficiency Vermont during planning, design, construction and commissioning phases
• Enhanced Commissioning of the building envelope and mechanical systems