AIA Vermont is pleased to announce that this year’s recipient of the Carol Miklos Community Outreach Grant is the Stowe Electric Department. The grant will be used to help the town of Stowe revitalize the Moscow Mills parcel, which includes a historic mill, which is being redeveloped to house new offices and garage space for town utility operations. The Carol Miklos Community Outreach Grant will be used to support an academic challenge for students, where they will be asked to produce competing plans for the red office building. These plans must reflect best practices in historic renovation, while developing usable ADA friendly office space and bathrooms that can be used by guests of the mill’s community center. These plans need to incorporate passive house design elements and renewable energy adoption.

“The end use of this building will be additional office space for our partnership with HireAbility Vermont – a non-profit that helps Vermonters with disabilities prepare for, obtain, andmaintain meaningful careers and to help employers recruit, train, retain and promote employees with disabilities. We will use the attic for record storage, and we will house our microgrid operations with associated technology. We are hoping for a conference room for educatingstudents about renewable, battery storage, microgrids, and use of historic buildings andenergy/watersheds.”

Stowe Electric Department will leverage their current relationships with professors at UVM, Norwich, CCV and NVU for the competition. The funds received from the AIAVT grant will pay for additional support from qualified experts that have been primarily volunteering their time to help our existing capstone groups. Professional consultants in historic renovation, engineering, ecology and building efficiency have all donated time to meet with our student mentees to help students learn about their intended crafts. “We appreciate the time that our consultants have been donating to the capstone projects but would like to be able to retain their expertise more officially, so that the students will have increased access to experts in their field of study.”

“We see our role as matchmaking students with hands-on projects that prepare them for careers in architecture and engineering, with special attention to multi-disciplinary learning. By organizing a student design competition around a Vermont historical building, we are hoping to spark interest in historical restoration and energy efficiency in students who will be entering the workforce in the coming years.”

Learn more about this ambitious revitalization project here: www.stoweelectric.com/mill

The Carol Miklos Community Outreach Grant is an annual grant program administered by AIA Vermont. Details and application instructions can be found here: www.aiavt.org/resources/outreach-grant