Multimedia Reporting (Adler-Utsler)

Piles of dirt stand 30 feet high. Dust kicked up by tractors lingers in the air. A lone KU flag hangs from a 200-foot crane. Signs outside the construction site promise that the hill will soon but the scene makes it hard to imagine Campanile Hill green again.

But come July, when construction of the new football facility is finished, the hill will be even greener than it was before.

Next July, when the new Kivisto Football facility is complete, it will be the first building on campus to ever receive a green roof. With aesthetic, energy and earth saving benefits, green roofs have become a national trend. The addition of the new green roof on campus, may put Lawrence in line to feel the effects of the trend.

Black waterproofing material, extra large support beams and 6 inches of concrete await the 500,000 pounds of soil and grass that will be added to the roof in April.

Construction the facility continues.
Waterproofing materials await the soil
and grass that will be added in April.
Photo: Ava Dinges

The green roof over the facility’s gymnasium is almost complete, but adding a green roof to the facility wasn’t in the original construction plans. Warren Corman, the University Architect says the University decided on the green roof when they worried about the affects the new facility would have on the look of Campanile hill.

Making the least impact possible on the hill became the University’s primary concern.

“Whatever we did on the hill, with all its history of tradition and commencement, we didn’t want to hurt the aesthetics of it. We didn’t want to hurt the beauty of that hill,” Corman says. “In fact, the Chancellor says that if you ruin the beauty of the hill, I’m going to kill you and bury you on the hill...I think he was joking.”

Jeffrey Bruce, the Kansas City landscape architect on the project, proposed a solution. Rather than building the facility’s 16,000 square foot gymnasium on top of the hill, Bruce suggested building the gym under it.

KU’s first green roof was born.

“We saw an opportunity to advocate a green roof as a viable solution,” Bruce says.

Bruce’s company has long been an advocate for green roofing, having completed about 60 green roof projects across the country.

Building KU’s new green roof set the University back an extra $230,000 out of the $33 million spent on the entire football facility.

Rendering of what the new football facility
will look like once the green roof on
top of the gymnasium is complete.
photo: courtesy of KU Design and
Construction Management

But Corman says the extra money spent was well worth it. He says the University is always worried about the $8 or $9 million it spends each year on the utilities of its 200 buildings. With the energy-saving benefits green roofs are known, the roof should pay for itself.

“We probably spend another $200,000 putting that greening roof on there, but I figured we’d save that in about 5 years just roughly,” Corman says. “And if the cost of energy keeps going up like it has been, we might even save it sooner than that.”

Corman estimates that the green roof will save energy by 20 percent because of added insulation and cooling from water stored in the soil. Having the building underground will save 20 percent more energy.

“Much like a cave that has a very stable interior climate, buildings that are buried under a thick layer of soil end up having a much more stable climate,” says Johannes Feddema, a KU geography professor. “What that means is that you have to expend much less energy to both heat and cool the system.”

After a depth of about 5 or 6 feet, the earth maintains a constant temperature. The dirt surrounding the walls of the gymnasium will always be roughly 55 degrees, Corman says. The facility will only need to be heated 10 degrees in the winter.

Corman says maintenance of the roof will be fairly simple because a lawn mower will be able to run right over the grass but with only 6 inches of soil to support grass, the roof will require an irrigation system to stay alive.

Initally, the thought of irrigating a roof concerned Corman.

“Any time you put irrigation water and dirt and grass on top of a roof, you’re always worried about it leaking,” Corman says. “Even with regular roofs, we have leaks. But if this thing leaks, you’d have a heck of a time finding it.”

Two layers of waterproofing materials and drainage boards are already in place in the roof to prevent it from leaking.

“We feel real good about it. We feel it’s not going to leak,” Corman says.

Fear of leaking has always been a concern for green roofs, but improvements in green roofing technologies have helped to calm those fears, Bruce says.

“We’ve seen many more projects come up. People are less reluctant to consider them,” Bruce says.

Bruce says he has seen a major increase in the number of green roof requests. Currently, his company is dealing with at least 15 new green roof projects.

Green roofs already exist on the Kansas City Public Library, the Nelson Art Gallery, the Boulevard Brewery, and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art.

According to a 2006 study by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, Kansas City ranks 5th in the nation for its 180,000 square feet of green roofing.

Phaedra Svec, architect at BNIM Archtects in Kansas City, attributes the rise of Kansas City’s green roof industry to the city’s water management problems.

With more miles of highway per capita, Kansas City is a good example of your typical urban sprawl, Svec says. The old water infrastructure downtown struggles to support the rapidly spreading city.

“The city is kind of a mess right now. The water infrastructure is so much in need of repair that there’s a lot of incentive to improve storm water quality, which green roofs do,” Svec says.

Soil on green roofs helps to store excess water for later use as compared to a regular roof that lets most rain water run away.

“We have a lot of incentive to keep our water on sight,” Svec says. “We’re actually heading toward water supply problems ourselves because we’re sending all our water away.”

The city of Chicago is turning to green roofs to control a different aspect of its environment. Chicago, the number one green roof city in the nation, mandated the use of green roofs on all city buildings in order to minimize deadly heat waves caused by excess heating of non-vegetated surfaces and rising carbon dioxide levels, Feddema says.

No matter the reason, aesthetic or environmental, green roofs are on the rise all across the nation.

More than 3 million square feet of green roofing was installed in United States last year, according to a 2006 survey done by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, resulting in a 25 percent growth in area from 2005. Results from the 2005 survey indicate the square footage the growth of the green roof square footage across the United States was 80 percent.

With the addition of KU’s new green roof, Lawrence may be next to feel the effects of the trend.

While no well-known green roofs exist in the city yet, plans and proposals are in place.

Designs for the controversial Oread Hotel planned near the north edge of campus show an array of trees on top of the roof of the seven story building. Proposals for a new $48 million library near the River Front Plaza include a green roof-garden.

If successful, the new football facility’s green roof may spark other green movements.

“KU has had many other energy efficient house and architectural design without much recognition,” Feddema says. “I think now that it’s tied to a sports facility, it will have a bigger impact on public opinion.”