The Crotched Mountain Master Plan, the first in their fifty-year history, was initiated in conjunction with changes in the way CMRC proposes to deliver its services — specifically, their moving from a shift model of care-giving to a live-in foster care model - and in how it proposes to power its campus - entirely with renewable sources.

As CMRC expand and improve their building stock, they requested that the Master Plan maximize opportunities to achieve resource efficiency and shift the campus toward its being powered entirely from renewable resource streams. Three years on, a wood chip control boiler has been constructed with the capability of adding a cogeneration module; the indoor campus has been tied to this renewable biomass fueled system. There is an understanding of the therapeutic value of engagement with the natural environment. As master planners, we were charged to pursue this in the magnificent mountaintop setting — ultimately creating an exemplary healthy, healing environment.

As part of their shift in care-giving models, CMRC intend to add substantially to their on-campus housing, for both their clients and staff, and to offer affordable housing to the broader Greenfield community as part a goal to create a vital, integrated, mutually supported community setting. To this end, Coldham & Hartman Architects' background in cohousing was regarded as particularly helpful.

"We are ... financially hard pressed, subsidizing through fund raising more than 50% of the costs of our children's hospital... We borrowed every dime we could to do this project.

"We built the plant on an unconfirmed availability and pricing of chips. If the pricing came in high, our potential for payback would be dependent on a large cutback in staffing and services.

"The chip bids came in last week. We were hoping for a five year guaranteed pricing, back up supply guarantee, under $43/ton, and preferred a local mill.

"We got $39/ton [equivalent of oil @ $0.60/gal.], 2% guaranteed inflation for a guaranteed five years with backup, from a reliable mill less than ten minutes away.

"As a result, we will have all the heat and hot water bill going into the local economy, jobs for local families, an infusion of modest value into the local forest value, a carbon neutral and emissions-light fuel, oil as a third place backup, virtually no risk of an oil spill on the mountain road potentially shutting us down for days, virtually no risk of an oil leak sending a fast moving plume down our steep slopes into the Peterboro aquifer and Pisquataquag headwaters, an entirely new infrastructure replacing our fifty year old systems, movement of our point of ignition out of the hospital and school buildings and to an external building, movement of our stacks away from the kids and 70 feet in the air, and we will save enough from current oil prices (even with a conceivable further drop in prices) that we will never have a year in which our savings are less than our bond repayment amount and a total payback of the bonds in an estimated 7.4 years."

-Don Shumway, President, CMRC

[NOTE: At the time of his letter, oil was $35/barrel. The estimated time of payback decreases rapidly as the price of their former primary fuel skyrockets.]

The Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center (CMRC) is an independent organization of approximately 600 staff on a 120-acre mountaintop campus, whose mission is to assist children and adults with disabilities to achieve optimal growth and independence. Core facilities include a brain injury hospital, children’s hospital, a school for 130 students (50% of whom are wheelchair-bound) and an array of rehabilitative facilities, including aquatic center, gymnasium, as well as various special clinical services.

The Master Plan was completed by the co-principal team of Walter Cudnohufsky Associates, Landscape Architects and Planners, and Coldham & Hartman Architects.

Coldham & Hartman Architects - Architect / Program Evaluation
Walter Cudnohufsky Associates - Landscape Architects / Planners
Marc Rosenbaum - Building Performance Consultant
MacMillin Company - Cost estimation / Construction sequence
Harold Cutler - Code Analysis