Taking part in Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony are: Anita Liang, Deputy Director, Facilities and Test Directorate at Glenn, Charles Scales, Deputy Associate Administrator, NASA Headquarters, Washington. D.C., Olga Dominguez, Deputy Administrator for Strategic Infrastructure, NASA Headquarters, Washington. D.C., Dr. Woodrow Whitlow, Jr., Associate Administrator for Mission Support, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., Ramon “Ray” Lugo, Glenn Center Director, Dr. Rickey Shyne, Director, Facilities and Test Directorate at Glenn. (West Life photo by Larry Bennet)

Main project of Glenn’s
20-year master plan
now under construction
By Kevin Kelley
Westshore
Published Sept. 1, 2010

NASA officials participated in a ceremonial groundbreaking Friday for a major component of Glenn Research Center’s 20-year master plan.

The Centralized Office Building, a three-story, 93,000-square-foot steel structure, will be located at the eastern side of the Glenn property adjacent to Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The structure will house 300 workers and include open work areas, conference rooms, a conferencing center and a 400-seat auditorium.

The building is expected to be finished in February 2012.

“This building is the first of what I hope are many investments at the Glenn Research Center, and it shows a commitment by the agency to the Glenn Research Center and the long-term health of the center,” said former Glenn director Woodrow Whitlow Jr., who was on hand for the groundbreaking ceremony.

Woodrow Whitlow Jr.

Whitlow, now associate administrator for mission support at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said the center chose a “slow but steady strategy” of modernizing the center’s facilities while also sustaining its capabilities.

Approved in 2007, the Glenn master plan promises an estimated $150 million worth of capital improvements to the Glenn Research Center and its Plum Brook Station near Sandusky, Glenn officials had said.

“The aim is to reduce the size of our footprint, so to speak, by about 15 percent over the next 45 years,” Whitlow said of the master plan, which he said takes a “similar but smaller strategy” on Glenn facilities.

Today, most of Glenn’s buildings are more than 40 years old, Whitlow said. But under the master plan, by 2055 about two-thirds of Glenn’s facilities will be younger than 40 years old, Whitlow said.

“We want to consolidate both our technical and institutional facilities and become more space efficient,” Whitlow said. “This building meets all of those goals.”

Charles Scales, NASA’s associate deputy administrator, congratulated Glenn employees for the hard work required to start work on the new structure.

“It’s going to help the efficiency and productivity of a group of folks who are already extremely productive,” he said.

Scales said Glenn’s master plan was in line with the administration’s national goals of reducing federally owned infrastructure within government and improving energy efficiency.

The Centralized Office Building has been designed to be certified by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. The program is considered a national benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance “green” buildings. Specifically, the building will have a silver certification, which signifies certain standards have been met in energy efficiency and water use.

Glenn’s master plan calls for the consolidation of facilities, meaning the campus will have fewer but more efficient and environmentally sustainable structures two decades from now.

Glenn Director Ramon “Ray” Lugo

Current Glenn Director Ramon “Ray” Lugo said that buildings such as the two on the north side of Brookpark Road are nearly 50 years old and would take a significant investment to bring up to modern standards.

“So bringing this building into the center of the campus obviously puts people in a better, more modern working environment [and] should reduce our cost for maintaining the facility,” Lugo said.

In addition, the building houses NASA employees within the facility’s security gate, thus improving safety for the workers, he said.

Lugo said the new building, which will be surrounded by other new structures in the years to come, will reenergize the center.

“This becomes the center of the new Glenn Research Center campus,” he said.

The center will submit requests for funding approval of additional elements of the plan over a 20-year period, Lugo said.

On the Web:

• NASA Glenn Research Center
• NASA Glenn "Aerospace Frontiers" newsletter article about master plan

Previous West Life articles:

• Glenn master plan would redevelop Fairview buildings (Feb. 7, 2007)
• NASA approves Glenn’s master plan (Sept. 12, 2007)
• NASA Glenn to transfer Brookpark Road buildings to GSA (May 26, 2010)