Richmond, VA

VCU Athletics Village Master Planning

Scope of Services

MEP/FP Engineering, Feasibility Study

A planning study conducted by VCU Athletics as part of the ONE VCU sustainability planning process—a comprehensive road map for achieving meaningful and impactful environmental sustainability goals at VCU and VCU Health. The study determined that an off-campus athletic village would provide more space for athletics and state-of-art facilities serving student-athletes, staff, spectators, and the community and will renew the commitment to student-athlete development. The Athletic Village, spanning 43 acres, will offer new sports fields and facilities, including a tennis center, soccer stadium, outdoor track stadium, practice fields, and a multi-purpose facility. The proposed design will embrace the local industrial style aesthetic and pay tribute to the historical use of the surrounding district.

Services

2RW conducted a feasibility study that contributed to central utility plant options and site utility infrastructure planning for VCU’s Athletic Village, focusing on minimizing fossil fuel utilization to align with VCU’s sustainability goals. As part of this, electric heat pump technologies were recommended to serve the buildings, which could enable the Athletic Village to achieve carbon neutrality and reduce environmental and economic harms associated with fossil fuel energy.

Two options were recommended by 2RW: a centralized campus geo-exchange distribution or an individual air-source cooling/heating system at each facility. Consideration was given to potential project constraints; therefore, the proposed systems were designed to allow the use of gas-fired equipment today, with the potential to reduce or eliminate fossil fuels in the future while maintaining system distribution configurations as needed.

As part of the master planning process, 2RW also provided MEP/FP engineering for a conceptual design for each athletic building based on the two central utility options.