Making a Better Environment

Completion Date: June 2005

Owner: Polaris Industries

Architect: Pope Associates, Inc.

Construction: Ryan Companies US, Inc.

Building Size: 160,000 square feet

With the arrival of the new $35.5-million Polaris Product Development Center last June, Wyoming found its status bumped from small town to exurb. Wyoming lured Polaris with its terrain of hills and swales—perfect for testing its product line of all-terrain vehicles, Victory motorcycles, and Ranger utility vehicle products—and its Job Opportunity Building Zones tax incentives, which are benefits available to businesses in Greater Minnesota areas where the state is trying to stimulate business activity. In the new facility, employees fabricate prototypes and conduct electrical, structural, and power-train tests.

Concern for workers began before the first Polaris employee set foot in the building. The building’s indoor air quality program started protecting the health of occupants even during construction, explains Paul Holmes, vice president and principal of Pope Associates, Inc., the St. Paul architecture firm that designed the facility. Indoor air quality precautions specify the use of low–volatile organic compound products to promote better air quality. The toxic compounds—including formaldehyde, many pesticides, solvents, and cleaning chemicals—are found in everyday items like paint and adhesives and are harmful when breathed. “We also flushed the building—with an air flush that gets everything bad out of the air—before occupancy,” Holmes says.

Several elements of the building and its campus act in harmony to make it sustainable. Large windows and rooftop monitors harness natural light to illuminate the building. The monitors are boxes that incorporate north-facing vertical glass panels to capture and transmit light throughout the building. Placing these glass panels vertically rather than horizontally (as with skylights) maximizes their thermal efficiency.

Mechanical systems meet or exceed the base requirements of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers. Planners specified building materials assembled and manufactured within 500 miles of the construction site to save on fuel consumption, and recycled materials were used whenever possible. Rain gardens—strategically placed shallow depressions planted with native greenery to capture storm water—prevent erosion and ensure that groundwater is replenished.