University of Rochester’s Genesee Hall Grand Opening
The University of Rochester’s River Campus’ newest residence hall, which overlooks the Genesee River from its east side, also bears its name.
Celebrating its grand opening during Meliora weekend, the 72,000 square-foot Genesee Hall—which also overlooks the University’s Brian F. Prince Athletic Complex— features four residential floors housing approximately 150 freshman students, as well as meeting rooms for study groups and workshops, a new locker room facility, and training rooms for athletic programs. Genesee Hall follows O’Brien Hall, completed in 2012, as the newest undergraduate residences to be built on River Campus since 1968.
“Naming our new undergraduate residence Genesee Hall seems fitting as a nod toward our history and the natural beauty that the river provides to our campus,” said Richard Feldman, dean of the College. “I’m very excited about the completion of Genesee Hall as a space that integrates the residential, academic and co-curricular facets of student life at the University.”
The facility’s top four floors of residential space feature single and double bedrooms; the main level is dedicated to academic and student life services with meeting rooms and offices. The first two floors of the building feature the new Boehning Varsity House. The House occupies the field level and includes new locker, sports medicine, and equipment rooms for the University’s outdoor sports teams. Currently, all the outdoor teams share space in Fauver Stadium, which is almost 90 years old and was not built to accommodate both men’s and women’s teams.
Genesee Hall is a modern, air conditioned facility with a high level of commitment to sustainable design, construction, and operational practice. Not only was this design-build project taken from award to occupancy in 13-1/2 months, but the project has also achieved LEED Silver NC (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Among the sustainable features of the building are water efficient fixtures in key areas, targeting a 45 percent reduction in water usage; and implementation of a whole building energy model to overcome the challenge of providing an abundance of fresh air to varied spaces, such as the locker rooms. The whole building energy model maximizes the use of materials and systems to result in an energy performance 14 percent better than a baseline building in terms of annual energy costs.
“The partnership and teamwork approach employed on the Genesee Hall project serve as an example of both smooth project execution and SWBR’s design talents” said Evangelos Yannas, Senior Project Manager at the University of Rochester. “Only with team members such as those on this project, and the trust that was built amongst the team, were we able to do what most thought couldn’t be done and even exceed expectations. I would strongly urge any owner to seriously consider SWBR to be their architectural consultant.”
The concept for the project is by Ayers Saint Gross, Architects and Planners. The design build team is The Pike Company in association with SWBR.
