Audubon Center at Debs Park On-Site Power Generation

Located just ten minutes northeast of downtown Los Angeles, Ernest E. Debs Regional Park is a 282-acre urban wilderness owned by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. The Audubon Center at Debs Park occupies 17 acres of the park, leased from the City.

The focus of the project is environmental education. The Center provides educational programs for the 50,000 schoolchildren who live within two miles of the park. It includes a multipurpose “Discovery Room,” for teaching and displays, a library and meeting room, a reception area, a gift shop, and a catering kitchen. The Debs Park facility is part of the Audubon Society’s focus on establishing Centers in urban and underserved communities.

Environmental Aspects

The Audubon Center at Debs Park is the National Audubon Society’s first nature center in California to be constructed from the ground up using environmentally sensitive design techniques. It is also the first building in the U.S. to achieve a Platinum rating under version 2 of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Rating System.

The Center is operated entirely off-grid, using only power generated on site. It is expected to use only 25,000 kWh of energy each year (around five kWh per square foot). The Center is designed to use 70% less water than a comparable conventional building, and to treat all wastewater on site. More than 50% of the building materials were manufactured locally, and more than 97% of construction debris was recycled.

The National Audubon Society plans to build a thousand urban facilities around the country by 2020.

Owner & Occupancy