Mill Mountain Garden Club explores Riverside 4’s green roof, other conservation measures

Members of the Mill Mountain Garden Club in Roanoke toured the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute’s Riverside 4 building in August to see the its rooftop garden and learn about other conservation aspects.

The club is keenly interested in environmental conservation, and members wanted to see how the newest building on Virginia Tech’s Health Sciences and Technology campus in Roanoke earned a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

The 139,000-square-foot building opened in 2020 with features including the green roof, a white roof to reflect sunlight, energy efficient air-handling equipment, vacancy sensors and LED lighting, low-flow plumbing fixtures and a 24,000-gallon cistern to collect rainwater runoff for use to flush toilets.

“We’re so proud to have a LEED Silver building here on this campus and to have the rooftop garden and everything they’re doing here to make this an energy efficient operation,” said Jeanne Fishwick, one of the conservation chairs with the club. “Conservation is a priority for our club. We really wanted to see for ourselves how it can be incorporated into business facilities.”

Obtaining LEED certification for campus buildings is a critical aspect of the university’s 2020 Climate Action Commitment to strive toward a carbon-neutral campus by 2030. The certification has the most widely-used green building rating system in the world.

The group enjoyed a tour led by Michael Friedlander, executive director of the research institute and Virginia Tech’s vice president for health sciences and technology, and Sarah Glenn, associate director of facility development and technical operations for the campus.

The group toured the William Jacob & Barbara Boyle Lemon Family Garden Roof along with laboratory spaces, research facilities, and the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine’s Animal Cancer Care and Research Center.

“It’s fantastic what we have in Roanoke that the world needs to know about,” said Whitney Feldmann, a conservation co-chair with the group. “And this building just exemplifies it.”

The trip offered club members a model of conservation they can take home with them.

“I think everybody can do better on their own,” said club president Pam Moskal, “starting at their own homes and supporting future businesses and our own valley and across the state country.”