Pete Frates Center

The new 31,000 SF indoor baseball/softball training and practice facility at Boston College was dedicated as the Pete Frates Center in 2019. The facility’s name honors the late Boston College baseball player who courageously battled ALS and was the co-founder of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which brought national awareness to the disease. The Pete Frates Center at Harrington Athletics Village includes locker rooms, lounges, softball and baseball clubhouses, strength and conditioning, sports medicine and hydrotherapy spaces, hospitality suite, laundry facilities, and indoor hitting tunnels on the second floor. With a LEED Silver certification and an EUI of less than 50, the building is not only a campus asset, but also an example of environmental design in a non-traditional higher education building.

Design strategies included enhanced indoor air quality (IAQ), indoor and outdoor water use reduction, operable doors for natural ventilation, and interior lighting controls. The project achieved LEED Silver certification under LEED-NC v4. The use of energy-efficient design strategies resulted in 31% energy savings over code minimum requirements. The energy model’s predicted EUI was a 51.1 kBTU/SF/YR. Based on the most recent twelve months of energy data, the building performed at an EUI of 46 kBTU/SF/YR.