Signs of life from new RMBL research facility in Gothic

“The snow must melt faster than it is now”

In a town site where new development isn’t exactly commonplace, Gothic is getting a new 4,800-square-foot laboratory this summer. The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory is replacing some of its aging lab space with a new state-of-the-art research facility.

But before construction can start, nearly 50 inches of snow will need to melt or be moved from the former site of the Murray Laboratory, where the building will go. That will depend at least partly on the benevolence of Mother Nature. If spring ever comes as advertised, work will be ready to start June 13.
RMBL announced last fall it had received a $1.85 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build the research facility, billed as a chance to transform the research conducted at the lab since it opened in 1928.
“This is a really exciting time for RMBL. This new research center will enable RMBL to expand the knowledge base that is critical to managing the healthy ecosystems on which all of our lives depend—clean water, fresh air, and food,” the lab’s executive director Ian Billick says. “What we learn today will have profound implications for future generations, and this investment by American taxpayers in scientific infrastructure will in turn have a tremendous impact on their world.”
And as much as the discoveries about plants and animals being made at RMBL will change the future, the way discoveries are made in the future will change as well, with the support of a research facility enabling scientists to look harder and deeper into their subjects.
“The current facility is designed to support biology on a molecular level, which is a departure from the lab’s roots in an observational type of biology,” RMBL physical plant supervisor Robyn Edwards says. “I think that doing things at Gothic always involves some tension between the old and the new, history and modernity. But this building really will allow for us to provide support for contemporary scientific processes.”
The new lab space will replace the former Murray Laboratory and the existing Willy Lab, since the terms of the NSF grant stipulate that there cannot be any net gain or loss of lab space as a result of the project.
General contractor FCI Constructors, which worked on the recent renovation of the Gunnison RE1J schools, was chosen earlier this month from a handful of bidders on the project to lead the team of many local tradesmen through the planned development.
“The building season is five months long. The work can be completed in that timeframe, but all has to go smoothly,” project manager Marc Litzen says. ”[We need to have] material available and workers on site and working efficiently. The weather has to hold out at the end of the season and the snow must melt faster than it is now.”
If the snow starts to melt as it should, Litzen hopes to break ground on the project by June 13, with a lot of local help by his side. He already has a list of local subcontractors who have been tested on the school project and are in line for more offers in Gothic this summer.
Along with electrical, mechanical and drywall contractors from Crested Butte on the list, Litzen has a surveyor and concrete and excavation contractors from Gunnison who will likely be put to work.
“FCI hopes to create a job for one of the local carpenters we used at CBCS,” Litzen adds. “Not sure what the need is at this point. It is a pretty small job.”
While it may be a small job for FCI, at 4,800-square-feet the new research facility will be one of the largest buildings in Gothic, which is known for its Lilliputian historic mining cabins and weathered appearance.
The new facility, being designed by Idaho-based Architects West with help from local architect Andrew Hadley, won’t be sided in reclaimed wood, but is being designed to blend with its surroundings, despite all its modern trappings and sustainable energy elements.
Director Billick also says there will be a “significant renewable energy component” designed into the facility as well as solar thermal panels to provide the building with hot water.
The research facility is being built in Gothic, which is a relatively pristine sensitive environment. The project was required to go through a NSF-conducted National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis and complete an Environmental Impact Statement.
“We’ll continue to look at the impacts to research, the impacts on the environment and any impacts the research facility might have on the views,” Billick says. “We’ll do a lot to accommodate those kinds of concerns.”
If all goes as planned, and the snow begins to melt, construction should start on the new still-unnamed research facility June 13 after a couple of days of surveying.