The Pro Tour has sold out! We hope you'll be able to join us for a future event.

$10 members/$15 non-members
AIA 1.5 LU/HSW, PHIUS 1.5 credits

NESEA's first virtual Pro Tour, featured an award-winning Passive House retrofit of a three family building in the Hudson Valley. During this interactive event, participants learned about the goals of the project and heard directly from the professionals who made it a reality. Just like an in-person Pro Tour, this event mixed presentation with small group conversation, giving participants the chance to meet project team members and one another. 

About the Project

North Miller Passive is a historic masonry retrofit in Newburgh, NY designed to the PHIUS+ 2018 standard. This project demonstrates a sustainable model for retrofitting existing building stock because the retrofit team honored the existing historic townhouses while delivering high-performance benefits of comfort, indoor air quality, and durability through the PHIUS standard. It was named a NYSERDA Buildings of Excellence recipient and with the assistance of this program will achieve net zero status. 

The Buildings of Excellence Competition, administered by NYSERDA, was launched in March 2019 and awarded $18 million under the first round. It is the only competition of its kind, with the awarded projects becoming part of a comprehensive data collection effort that will help determine how to cost-effectively deliver superior performing buildings that will serve as an essential building block of a carbon-neutral future and advance the design and construction of multi-family buildings. North Miller Passive Multifamily was selected under Round 1 for its low carbon performance, profitability, ability to be adopted broadly, and for creating a healthy and safe living environment.

The improved project will upgrade the building to Net Zero designation benefiting not only the building occupants, but also the building owner. The business case, which will be outlined in the featurette includes a combination of factors common in Newburgh and other financially distressed areas, allowing this project to serve as an example to be replicated by other developers and lenders.

About the Event

We piloted a format that preserved the interactive, behind-the-scenes vibe of Pro Tours that have made them so popular with attendees, hosts, and sponsors throughout the region. Unlike a traditional webinar, attendees came with their mics and cameras on: as a participant in this event, they were able to see and hear other attendees, ask content experts questions directly, and meet new people in the NESEA community. 

After a welcome from our sponsors, the event started with a featurette: a short film, curated by event host John Loercher of Northeast Projects, with footage of the project site. The featurette provided a project overview, including history of the building, design strategy, energy systems, and building envelope details. 

Once we set the stage with the featurette, we split participants into virtual breakout rooms: each breakout room was hosted by a member of the project team, who went into details about their work on the project. The team members rotated through the breakout rooms, meaning attendees had small group time with each speaker. 

Near the end of the event, we brought all the attendees back together for a final Q&A.  Attendance was limited to 40 participants as we experimented with this format.

Schedule

If you have questions about this event, you can contact Florence at fmacgregor@nesea.org.