Sustainability helps sustain KG+D's success

BY PETER KATZ Pkatz@westfairinc.com

The Mount Kisco-based architecture f irm KG+D, which is well-known for its school and municipal building designs throughout the Hudson Valley and in Fair f ield County and elsewhere, recently was named Firm of the Year by the American Institute of Architects New York State Chapter. KG+D is the f irst f irm to have received the award that does not maintain an of f ice in New York City.

Russell Davidson, president and a principal KG+D, told the Business Journals that the f irm has managed to build long-lasting relationships with school districts and various levels of local governments while also working on commercial projects.

Russell Davidson. Photo by Bedford Photographic Inc.

“It’s building relationships with communities in which the improvements that are being proposed are valuable and meaningful to the whole community,” Davidson said. “Our slogan is ‘Listen, Imagine and Build.’ Because a proposal is born out of listening to the community it is easy to f ind success because it comes from the very grassroots base that will ultimately have to approve the funding.”

Davidson explained that KG+D often becomes involved in projects at their earliest stages and helps municipalities and school districts present concepts to the community and build support when a referendum is required to decide whether bonds will be floated to pay for a project.

“We help our clients communicate with excellent graphics and renderings and attend lots and lots of meetings,” Davidson said. “The proposal itself really comes from listening to the community so that by the time it comes out you’ve built a constituency that already knows why it’s valuable.”

Davidson said that the big difference between work for a commercial developer and publicly-funded work is that the public thinks of public buildings as being designed to last forever; they’re always going to need their libraries, schools and government buildings.

“Our f irm takes a long view toward the life cycle of the building,” Davidson said. “A developer tends to look more at the amount of time he’s going to hold and operate the building or the life of the f inancing. We look at 50- and 100-year cycles for buildings. We still are designing buildings with terrazzo floors, walls that are 14-inches or 16-inches thick. The other big issue is sustainability and energ y ef f iciency. Rather than f irst cost or having a two- or three-year payback on some sustainable feature public clients can look at 10-, 15- and 20-year paybacks.”

Davidson said that KG+D takes the long view in designing for sustainability and durability since the longer expected life span of a public building allows a longer time period to amortize the costs of the highest quality and most energ y-ef f icient mechanicals.

“It’s so sort of baked into our approach. It doesn’t seem necessarily novel anymore,” Davidson said. “It’s just the way we do every project.”

Davidson said that KG+D is part of a program of the American Institute of Architects called the 2030 Commitment to lower carbon use by the year 2030.

“It’s a relatively new initiative but our f irm has been involved with sustainable building for quite a long time,” Davidson said. “Some of the notable ones include the Jacob Burns Media Arts Lab, which was the f irst LEED Gold building in Westchester; The Post Road School in White Plains from around 2007 had an Energ y Star rating of around 100 with a fully ground source heat pump for heating and cooling. Right now over in Middletown they’re drilling over 100 wells for a ground source heat pump system for Twin Towers Middle School; and under construction right now in Yonkers is the Justice Sonia Sotomayor School, which will be heated and cooled with heat pumps, so zero carbon fuels used for heating and cooling in a brand new building.”

Rendering of Justice Sonia Sotomayor School in Yonkers.

Among KG+D’s other projects are: the Seven Bridges Middle School in Chappaqua; Pleasantville High School renovations; additions and renovations at The Ursuline School in New Rochelle; theater restoration at Bronxville High School; replacement of the Hutchinson Elementary School for the Pelham Union

Free School District; and a new dining hall, athletic center and playing f ields at the Trinity Pawling School.

“We have done a fair amount of what we call replacement buildings,” Davidson said. “One of the most ener g y-ef f icient things you can do is to renovate and restore existing buildings. That’s pretty typical for the Northeast, which was settled so long ago. In Katonah, Katonah Elementary was built in 1939 as part of the Works Progress Administration and we’re now renovating it and adding a ground source heat pump system to the entire historic old elementary school.”

Davidson said that there is growing support for designing and constructing sustainable buildings and not wasting resources by putting in outdated and ineff icient systems.

“We’ve seen the public opinion and client opinion come around to absolutely wanting a sustainable approach even if it costs more,” Davidson said. “Even before Covid the public really cared as much about a healthy building as it did an energ y-ef f icient building. We’re seeing a lot more consensus around clean, fresh, f iltered air in buildings. It’s been an interesting progression toward the long view of sustainability and healthier buildings.” least 200 nurses,” Carbone said, “still far def icient from what the real needs are.”

According to Carbone, Connecticut needs to add 3,000 new nurses to the medical workforce every year to avoid falling behind demand, but only 1,900 students graduate from nursing programs in the state per year. Of nurses currently in the workforce, more than 50% of those working are at least 50 years old, in a state which already has the nation’s sixth oldest population.

“Every year that goes by we are deeper into a ditch of not having a suf f icient number of nurses,” Carbone said.

The WorkPlace’s application for the federal grant was supported by Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Reps. Jim Himes and Rosa DeLauro.

Announcing the awarding of the grant at a ceremony on May 22, Blumenthal said that “this milestone grant will help train a new generation of nurses— meeting an urgent need to support health care heroes who feel overworked and overwhelmed. New nurses are especially necessary in communities with health care worker shortages, a result of superhuman burdens and burnout. Nobody does skill training better than The Workplace and we’re proud to have them as a partner. Each of these new nurses will be a force multiplier in the battle for better health outcomes.”

“It’s hard to imagine a more impactful program than one that connects unemployed individuals with pathways to careers and f inancial security, especially in a f ield as essential as nursing,” added Himes.

“The whole f ield of health care is the most reliable part of our economy,” Carbone noted, stressing the value of the training to the individuals who will receive it. “Doesn’t matter if there’s a great recession, if there’s a pandemic, people need medical attention. That sector of your economy grows every single month in spite of other conditions that might mitigate against it.”

Carbone highlighted the wide array of careers that can be pursued within the medical f ield with the degrees the program will offer, particularly in a state such as Connecticut where research and biomedical companies produce additional jobs. He noted that the diversity of those seeking careers in nursing and medical f ields is also increasing, with a wide range of ages, races, and backgrounds on display among those who have come to meetings about nursing at The WorkPlace. The current demand has even lured people with backgrounds in other f ields, including his own family.

“My son and his wife, they’re both intelligent. He went to college for business administration, graduated in economics but decided he really didn’t want to do that. He got a job at Yale, loved health care, went to UConn, got a master’s in nursing and now he’s one of the administrators now,” Carbone said, who noted his wife went to school for psycholo g y is now she’s a nurse. “One of the things they love about it so much is they’re so appreciated.”

Carbone said The WorkPlace plans to engage in substantial marketing efforts in the near future to reach the public with information about the program.