HANCOCK - The Pittsburgh Glass Center is an art glass workshop and a gallery built using many "green" technologies.

That is the goal of people involved with the Copper Country Community Arts Center, so representatives of the PGC came to Hancock Wednesday to talk about their efforts with people who are interested in greening the CCCAC.

At the Finlandia University Jutila Center for Global Design and Business, Heather McElwee, assistant director of the PGC, and Chris Clarke, PGC facilities director, spoke about the decision to construct the PGC in an existing building and to retrofit it using environmentally sound construction methods and recycled material.

In May, the CCCAC received a $60,000 Kresge Foundation Green Building Initiative Grant to do planning to make their building environmentally friendly, and the talk by McElwee and Clarke was the last in a series of three intended to get the Houghton/Hancock community involved with the planning process.

McElwee said many visiting artists have used the new facility, and are impressed by it without knowing it's a green structure.

"The artists that come in constantly comment on our building about what a great place it is to work in," she said.

McElwee said the 16,000 square-foot PGC opened in 2001 after an 18-month construction period.

The retrofitting of the PGC building was done after a $3.6 million fundraising effort, McElwee said, but only $1 million came from the public, with the rest coming from foundations and corporate donors.

Clarke said in 1999, the people involved with the PGC started looking for a building, and specifically chose a economically distressed neighborhood because of low real estate prices, but also because it was an ethnically diverse neighborhood.

The building in which the PGC is housed was constructed in the 1940s as a Studebaker automobile dealership, Clarke said. It's had many uses since, so it was decided to gut it to the four walls and start over with all new utilities.

The interior of the building was covered with lead paint, but Clarke said it was decided to leave a small patch of it as a historical feature.

Clarke said the original windows in the building were relatively small, so most of them were enlarged.

"We did cut out many of the windows to let in more natural light," he said.

Windows were also cut into the roof to allow in light, but also to help vent heat from the furnaces used in the glass-making process.

Clarke said the furnaces run at 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so some innovative ways had to be found to remove the heat.

"Ventilation was crucial." he said

Some is vented out of the building, Clarke said, but much of it is is used to heat it in the winter with hot water heating coils in the floor.

There are many recycled construction items in the building, Clarke said, either from the building itself or from other buildings. Windows from a school building were used to a great extent. The wallboard throughout the building was made from 95 percent recycled gypsum. There are also recycled fixtures of various kinds.

Glass making is a very dirty process, Clarke said. Silica dust gets into the air of the building, and the ventilation system helps remove it. A large amount of water is needed in the process, also, so a water recycling and filtering system was made.

"Glass (working) and green building really shouldn't go together, but we do our best," he said.

A computer system constantly monitors the efficiency of the utilities in the building, Clarke said.

McElwee said those involved with the PGC are making it available to other people interested in green building technologies.

"We hope to continue to be a leader in green innovations, particularly for art centers," she said.

Kurt Hauglie can be reached at khauglie@ mininggazette.com.