Owings Mills Learning Center

The Owings Mills Learning Center is a one-of-a-kind project in Baltimore County and features excellent roadside visibility that generated a high volume of consumer usage for its two occupants following its early spring official grand opening. The six-story, 120,000-square foot building overlooking I-795 has been designed to house a new branch of the Baltimore County Public Library as well as an expanded location for the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). Positioned on the first two levels of the structure, within 40,000 square feet of space, is the 19^th and largest branch of the Baltimore County Public Library; it is stocked with a collection of nearly 115,000 items and features individual study rooms, 70 computers public use, a magazine lounge, an early learning activity center, teen area, a café, and a large, quiet study area. The library is also wired for complementary Wi-Fi service and contains a community room that will be shared by CCBC.

CCBC has leased the remaining 80,000 square feet and occupies floors three through six. Upon completion of the Learning Center, CCBC relocated from its current space on Painters Mill Road, which operates as an Extension Center to the main campus in Catonsville. The new space is approximately three times larger than the current facility, features 27 separate classrooms and specialized science laboratories, and provides resources to allow CCBC to expand its existing enrollment of 5,000 students.

The post-tension concrete Owings Mills Learning Center has a complex skin of glass curtain wall, architectural pre-cast concrete, EIFS and architectural metal panel skin, faces a public plaza within Metro Centre at Owings Mills, and is connected to the existing eight-level parking garage. The project has been constructed to achieve LEED-Silver certification via its partial green roof designed to improve both air and water quality and mitigate heat loss and gain, use of low VOC materials, use of recycled materials, regionally manufactured materials fabricated within 500 miles of its location, and all wood used on the project is FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council)-certified.