Negative turns to positive for OARDC campus

WOOSTER -- It's an ill wind that blows no good; the ill wind -- a tornado -- that blew through the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center on Sept. 16, 2010, causing massive destruction, resulted in opportunities for change and innovations that may otherwise have been implemented years into the future.

While it's certainly not the way OARDC officials would have wanted to update the complex, they have worked hard and creatively to generate gain from loss.

"How do we go about putting our programs back together?" was one of the first questions asked by personnel, said Director Steven Slack.

Along the way to rehabilitation, "we've learned some significant things about restoration," Slack said, beginning with the problem of how, from an insurance point of view, certain types of loss could even be quantified.

It came down to working through it on an individual basis, Slack said, evaluating the destruction of materials representing a series of experiments over a number of years and the adding of time onto a student's program or a researcher's timeline.

"All of these things we eventually worked through," Slack said, although, he said, some programs continue to this day to be impacted by damage inflicted by the tornado.

It was insurance money, combined with emergency funds from the state -- for which Slack gave a great deal of credit to state Rep. Ron Amstutz -- that financed the new Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering building after the original structure was destroyed by the tornado.

From the time the original building was constructed, the technology had changed significantly, he said.

Along with being energy-efficient, the building "was designed overall to be very sensitive to how people respond to the environment and also functional," Slack said.

Slack said when he and David Benfield, associate director, began their careers 30 years ago, labs were customized to fit specific individuals.

"What we're trying to do now is to build a lab independent of an individual program," Slack said, making it possible to "move things around."

The modern design is meant to "enhance collaboration and communication," relating to "how science is (now) done."

Labs are open and segregated from office space; the LEED silver- certified building features "a lot of glass" on the exterior and interior of the building, creating a "more open design."

Although there had been plans to renovate the agricultural and engineering building, "it wasn't highest on the priority list," Slack said. Rather, it was pushed to the forefront by the damage the tornado caused.

The updated facility evolved from "tremendous loss," Slack said, but "five years later a lot of other departments are feeling fairly envious (of it)."

The destruction of the greenhouses necessitated, from a scientific standpoint, an extensive planning process in the replacement process to incorporate "what science needs today," representing state-of-the-art practices and features positively impacting research and instituted with the assistance of a consultant.

The greenhouses were "very critical" as millions of dollars of research grants relied on them, Benfield said. Ironically, the makeshift substitutions have become an integral part of the landscape.

"(They) are what we still call temporary greenhouses," Slack said, ones that continue in operation because personnel consider their function significant to the plant breeding process.

Part of their importance results from the fact they "open up space," Benfield said, in the other greenhouses for plants needing more "fine-tuning."

The loss of vegetation represented another major challenge.

In coming up with a new plan, "we had a campus beautification fund we put together," Slack said, encouraging input from personnel into what parts of the environment were most important.

"We clearly recognized it was not going to be the same," Slack said.

When species unique to Ohio were planted along redesigned pathways, Slack said, visitors and students were kept in mind. "We did put things back in a way that made more sense in terms of those kinds of activities."

"There were changes," such as paving pathways, "that made things more accessible to different people for different purposes," he said, particularly equating paving of pathways with accommodating visitors with special needs.

The impact of the tornado "allowed us to think differently about use (space)," he said.

"For the past decade we had been talking about a new welcome center," Slack said, which, following the tornado, led to repurposing of the research operations building for a new role.

"We anticipate in the next year we'll start on that," Slack said, having in hand about three-fourths of the funding needed.

The role of Miller Pavilion also evolved.

Because of its heavy use throughout the year, "we've added heating and cooling," Slack said, making it a year-round facility.

While much of the arboretum has been restored, one area was left untouched in the wake of the tornado, allowing researchers to study "what happens in terms of natural regrowth," he said.

"We've had some interesting things come out of this," Slack said, for example, showing how "natural disaster changes ecology and how animals and plants use disturbed (areas)."

The tops of trees chopped off by the tornado have become "whole different habitats than were there before," Slack said

Overall, "one parcel impacts another," he said. The tornado's clearing out of entire areas "all of a sudden opens up the whole (space)." The unfolding design "will take time to play out."

Reporter Linda Hall can be reached at 330-264-1125, Ext. 2230, or [email protected]. She is @lindahallTDR on Twitter.