CHESTERTOWN, MD — Emory Hill & Company of New Castle, Delaware, broke ground Saturday on the new Sultana Education Center at 200 South Cross St. in Chestertown.
Sultana’s Education Center is being built as part of an effort to double the capacity of the Sultana Education Foundation program, which connects people to the Chesapeake Bay’s history, ecology, and culture, by inspiring them to join in preserving and restoring America’s largest estuary and providing seasonal experiential education programs in History and Environmental Science to more than 12,000 students and teachers annually from 15 Maryland counties. The completed Education Center will allow the Foundation to function on a year-round basis as well as expand its existing programs for schools and the public and will be located near the Sultana, an 18th century schooner which provides education through sailing experience.
After an extensive search, Emory Hill & Company was selected as the general contractor on the project and, together with the Sultana Education Foundation, is striving to obtain a LEED Platinum certification for the new center, the highest level of certification for environmental sustainability awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. When complete, Sultana’s Education Center will be one of only two LEED Platinum buildings on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and one of only a handful of LEED Platinum buildings in a National Register Historic District in the United States.
Emory Hill brings extensive experience to the project, including the construction of several previous successful LEED certified projects such as the Delaware Technical & Community College “Energy House” teaching facility in Georgetown, which won LEED Platinum certification and the Ferris School Juvenile Services Facility in Wilmington which is seeking LEED Gold status.
Joe Fox, construction director at Emory Hill & Company, said he anticipates construction will take approximately eight months and that the facility will open to the public in the summer of 2016.