Penfield Children's Center

Built in 1930 with a major addition in 1994, the building at 833 N. 26th Street has been home to the Penfield Children’s Center since the 1970’s. Penfield Children’s Center provides early education, health and wellness services and family programming to more than 1,400 children annually. The facility houses multiple classrooms and clinics with early education and child care, nursing care, therapy services and administrative office space.

Motivated by the need for new HVAC equipment and a desire to minimize costs and energy use, Penfield Children’s Center was first introduced to the City of Milwaukee's Better Buildings Challenge program when collecting vendor bids. After receiving several significant quotes, building management took the advice of Jack Schirpke at Total Mechanical to take the pledge and gain a free energy assessment in order to establish their own baseline and assist with decision making.

Although I was initially reluctant about the viability of taking on the Challenge, the whole process has been much easier than expected. The way you have a whole team assembled just to get me through this, and even brought someone in to train me, has made it a positive experience. I now look forward to pledging our other building very soon!
Bryant Zimmermann, Director of Facilities & Logistics

Energy Performance

Since their 2009 baseline, the source energy use intensity (EUI) for Penfield Children’s Center gradually and steadily decreased until 2012. Although it has seen an increase since 2012, particularly in 2016, rising energy use can be attributed to increases in the number of staff and 100% occupancy of the facility.

Completed Projects

Lighting	Plug Loads & Controls	Building Envelope	HVAC	Appliances & Equipment	On-Site Generation	Water

Future Plans

Penfield Children’s Center is still in the early planning stages, but by utilizing the information from their free energy assessment they have outlined three major projects for the near future.  Their plans include converting all interior lighting to LED, replacing the oldest HVAC rooftop unit with a more efficient system, and upgrading the BAS system to integrate old utilities with the new HVAC for more efficient controls.

Building management at Penfield also looks forward to investigating both PACE and Focus on Energy for financing options as they move forward with this ambitious project.