Tioga County, PA

Tioga Welcome Center

Administered through the Pennsylvania Department of General Services, this 10,000 square foot facility is designed to embrace the scenic beauty of the surrounding region. The entrance and main lobby are framed with stone piers and heavy timber oak trusses. The rear of the building includes large windows and an exterior terrace with dramatic views across the valley of the Tioga-Hammond Dam area.

LDG’s engineers prepared the site and infrastructure requirements for the project, which included the removal of nearly 400,000 cubic yards of rock for a nearby highway project, also designed by LDG. The final site design includes parking for over 80 automobiles and 30 trucks.

The environmentally friendly mechanical system relies on the natural cooling and heating effect of the earth through the use of a 40-ton geothermal system with 30 geothermal wells. There are 14 boreholes adjacent to the facility, each reaching over 300 ft. into the earth and contain tubing loops that extract heat from the earth for building heat, or reject heat to the earth for building cooling. The system is coupled with multiple water source heat pumps that provide zone control throughout the space. System controls consist of individual programmable thermostats per each heat pump unit.

The remoteness of the project location required that LDG, in conjunction with GPU electrical utility, design the extension of the local primary electrical distribution nearly a quarter of a mile below grade up very steep terrain. LDG also extended the secondary electrical distribution and telecommunication system more than two miles from the site to support a local weather monitoring station.

Considering the remoteness of the facility, the addressable fire alarm system was designed with an LED annunciator panel at the facility’s main entrance which allows responders to visually identify the location of the alarm initiation via a floor plan to reduce response time.

This project was the recipient of the ACEC/PA Honor Award and the ACEC/National Recognition Award.

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