California Polytechnic State University, Poly Canyon Village

San Luis Obispo, California

Firm

Niles Bolton Associates

Client

California Polytechnic State University

Area

1,405,118 sq.ft.

Total Cost

$249,697,321

Completion Date

06/2009

In 2009, Poly Canyon Village welcomed students to a 2,670-bed, 1.4 million-square-foot, sustainable, adaptable environment. Working together, the university and the design-build team, which consisted of more than 50 professional entities, creatively kept to the proposed budget while exceeding expectations and achieving LEED gold certification.

In just four years, the team delivered a project meeting current market expectations, maximized the budget, and brought the best green building practices to campus housing. Poly Canyon Village is the first LEED-certified project on the Cal Poly campus and is the largest LEED-certified project in the California State University system.

Poly Canyon Village’s 38-acre site, nestled in the hillsides of Poly Canyon at the southwestern edge of Caballo Peak, enhances the project’s overall beauty but presented logistical challenges.

For many years, the Poly Canyon Village site was used by the university’s School of Agriculture as a cow pasture, feed mill and storage area. These uses had a negative impact on the site soil, as well as the adjacent Brizzolara Creek, which runs along the southern and eastern edge of the project. Redeveloping the site gave the design-build team an opportunity to remediate the damaged brownfield land, as well as repair the creek, enabling native plants and wildlife to prosper in non-developed site areas.