Manchester Public Library

O&G Industries served as Construction Manager for the new Manchester Public Library, a landmark approximately 75,000-square-foot, three-story facility on Main Street in Manchester, Connecticut. Designed by HBM Architects in collaboration with Friar Architecture, the new library was constructed on a constrained urban site following demolition of a former bank building and is designed to become Connecticut’s first net-zero energy public library.

The project builds on O&G’s growing expertise in net-zero and high-performance construction. The Manchester Public Library is the fourth net-zero building O&G has constructed for the Town of Manchester, following Buckley, Bowers and Keeney Elementary Schools. Unlike the three school renovations, the library is new construction, allowing O&G to apply lessons learned from Manchester’s earlier net-zero program to an increasingly sophisticated combination of high-performance building systems, renewable energy and grid-interactive technology.

The all-electric building incorporates geothermal heating and cooling, rooftop photovoltaic solar, battery energy storage, electric vehicle charging and a grid-interactive microgrid system designed to balance onsite energy production and consumption while reducing demand on the electrical grid. Publicly available engineering information identifies 40 geothermal wells, a solar photovoltaic array and an 840 kWh battery energy storage system, with a targeted Energy Use Intensity of approximately 19 kBTU per square foot per year. Eaton’s microgrid system will coordinate solar generation, battery storage and EV charging and enable excess energy to support grid stability.

Constructing those systems on a tight downtown site required careful planning and sequencing. O&G bid the geothermal scope early with the site package so the wellfield could be installed before the site became congested with other trades, preserving access and helping protect the project schedule. The project also required substantial coordination among geothermal, electrical, controls, solar, battery storage and building-envelope scopes as multiple high-performance systems were integrated into a single facility.

Building-envelope performance was another critical part of the construction strategy. The completed building achieved an air-leakage result of 0.125 cfm/sf at 75 Pa, outperforming the aggressive project target of 0.15 cfm/sf at 75 Pa. In recognizing the result, Town Facilities Director Chris Till credited the coordination and follow-through of O&G, the design team, van Zelm, Salas O’Brien and the trade contractors, noting that the result is important to the building’s long-term performance and net-zero energy goals. The result reinforces one of the central lessons from O&G’s Manchester net-zero experience: high-performance design depends on disciplined field execution, coordination and verification.

The library’s energy strategy also introduced new regulatory and constructability considerations. During the project, O&G helped navigate requirements associated with the battery energy storage system and Connecticut Siting Council review, drawing on expertise from O&G’s Power Division and bringing additional specialty resources into the process. This cross-disciplinary approach helped the project team address a complex energy-storage component that distinguishes the library from Manchester’s earlier net-zero school projects.

Beyond its high-performance systems, the Manchester Public Library was designed as a new civic hub for the community, with children’s and teen spaces, a makerspace, audio-visual studio, private study and meeting rooms, flexible community space and expanded technology infrastructure.

The Manchester Public Library demonstrates O&G’s ability to manage the full construction complexity of a net-zero project, from early procurement and site logistics through envelope QA/QC, systems integration, testing, commissioning coordination and turnover. Together with O&G’s three net-zero elementary school renovations in Manchester, the project represents a growing body of proven experience delivering high-performance public buildings.