Capitol Theater building, under renovation, gets green roof

A dilapidated red brick building stretches along Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford’s North End, amid homes, shops, sidewalks, and the occasional tree. Entrances with peeling paints of blue, red and green beckon to long-gone customers, offering entertainment that hasn’t existed for decades.

Two stories up, unseen to passersby, a green sanctuary sits in this otherwise urban jungle. Encircled by the tops of the building’s brick walls, a sea of green, red and brown plants emerges. Although they appear to be a garden, these plants have a much more essential purpose.

These plants make up the building’s “green roof,” recently installed atop the old Capitol Theater by New Bedford’s Community Economic Development Center for its future offices and its new Resilience Hub. The roof will help the center meet the city’s stormwater mitigation requirements, incorporate sustainable practices into its architecture and provide its future residents with a visual landscape.

The city’s Department of Public Infrastructure requires owners of a new or redeveloped building to treat a minimum of 40% of rainwater on site, to prevent flooding and sewer overflows. This means the building temporarily stores a volume of water before it is discharged to the city’s drains. The roof, made up of sedum plants, a type of succulent plant, will reduce some of this runoff and drainage so the building complies with these limits. 

(Other ways property owners can treat rainwater include underground infiltration, porous pavement and blue roofs — where the water is physically stored on the roof itself.)

Stormwater mitigation reduces flooding and sewer overflows. Jamie Ponte, commissioner of DPI, said when a building is being redeveloped — which is the case for the resilience hub — this triggers the need for a stormwater mitigation permit. 

DPI worked with the CEDC so the nonprofit could meet these standards. But the decision to implement the green roof was ultimately up to the CEDC, which partnered with studio2sustain inc, an architecture and design practice committed to sustainability, for the project beginning in 2018.

Corinn Williams, director of the CEDC, said the center chose the green roof as an innovative strategy for a problem that is typically difficult to solve in urban spaces. 

“In densely populated neighborhoods that are landlocked without good access or drainage systems, this is being utilized in different communities as a solution,” Williams said.

What is a green roof? 

Green roofs are covered in plants — typically sedum plants — instead of traditional roofing materials such as asphalt, metal or concrete. They can provide shade, add visual aesthetics, and reduce heat in the affected building and air.  

The CEDC used LiveRoof, a green roof supplier, to provide and install the sedum plants. These roofs also prevent pollution, increase oxygen and reduce noise, according to LiveRoof’s website. 

Kathryn Duff, founder and director of studio2sustain, said that the sedum plants — which were installed about a week ago — are great for storm water mitigation. Because they absorb a lot of water, the building can drain water out more slowly instead of immediately discharging into the city’s sewer system.

The roof for the plants at the resilience hub — which Duff described as the “bathtub roof” because it is surrounded by walls — uses one tray to hold the soil and plants and a second tray below it, called a “blue vessel,” that stores additional water not absorbed from the plants, Duff said. 

“We have three ways to hold water in a storm event with this system: the leaves, the foliage and the succulents of the plant; the soil that the plants sit in; [and] then the vessel underneath the soil that just holds the water,” she said.

It also features skylights in various places on the flat space.

Duff said green roofs also protect roofing systems because the plants absorb ultraviolet rays that would otherwise wear down building materials. The parts of the roof not covered by trays and plants are shielded by rubber mats. 

“You’re not deteriorating that roofing membrane,” Duff said. “You’re actually building a structure on top of it that’s protecting [it].” 

As a result, the life expectancy of the membranes is extended and the resilience of the building increases. Duff said that in her experience this increases the resilience of the building and the life cycle expectancy of materials by about 30%. 

Another effect — heat reduction — lessens air conditioning costs and increases building efficiency, Duff added.

“Anything you can do to absorb that heat and mitigate it, disperse it, is a huge benefit to the building, to the comfort of the people using the building and also to the operational costs of the building,” she said. 

A green roof also reduces the impact of heat islands — which are urban landscapes with few trees, little greenspace and lots of concrete and paved surfaces. In New Bedford, heat islands are creating hotter temperatures and unhealthy conditions in some neighborhoods, The Light has previously reported.

Shawn Syde, a city engineer, said that while roofs usually add to heat island impacts, green roofs do the opposite. 

“You don’t have that sun directly going onto the black roof that’s now hitting the plants, which is a lot cooler,” Snyde said. “So that will also help keep the building cooler as well, and the surrounding area cooler.” 

The CEDC’s plans for the building include six affordable apartments. Two apartments’ windows will face the roof, and the other four will be along a hallway that has windows facing the roof. 

The residents will look out at the green roof, which is now installed, instead of traditional roof materials like thermoplastic polyolefin or rubber.

“They all have a beautiful, cool roof, flat roof, landscaped roof that’s not throwing heat into that building that will have to be then treated or mitigated with air conditioning,” Duff said. “And it gives a beautiful visual backdrop.”

She said the CEDC should only have to provide maintenance for the roof once a year in the spring to weed it and check it.

What does this mean for New Bedford’s future?

Duff and Williams both said they predict green roofs will become a more popular option for stormwater mitigation in other buildings in New Bedford. 

This is the second time studio2sustain is partaking in a project like this, the first being the rehabilitation of a historic building on Purchase Street for an affordable housing project. Duff said the installment of that green roof encouraged the company to try the same approach at Capitol Theater. 

“We thought, ‘Wow, it’s working. It’s performing,’” Duff said. “And it really was not that complicated to install.”

The CEDC plans to move its headquarters to the Capitol Theater building from its current location on North Front Street in 2026. The CEDC and studio2sustain decided to install a green roof partially because the location is prone to flooding, Williams said.  

It plans to use the resilience hub to provide community services in the neighborhood, including food distribution, access to financial services, workforce development, health insurance enrollment and a satellite clinic. 

It will also serve as a small business incubator, a home to community kitchens and an indoor gathering space. During climate events, Williams said it will act as a community center: for instance, a cooling center in a heat wave and an electricity source during severe storms. 

The Capitol Theater building originally opened in 1920 and served as a movie theater for about 40 years. It became a rock concert venue in the 1970s until it closed in the 1980s. For decades, it sat dormant in the city’s North End, until 2024, when the CEDC began its $11 million effort to revive the space. 

Williams said the resilience hub will serve as a “demonstration project of sustainable design” because of its green roof and rehabilitation efforts. The building has another roof that presides over the former theater space. It will have solar panels on it, with sedum plants along its borders.

The green roof is a way for the CEDC to add a component of community resilience and a tangible way to address climate change, Williams said.

“We’re part of something really innovative and a really exciting way of finding a solution to an ongoing issue that communities like New Bedford will be facing and many buildings will be facing as well,” she said.

Crystal Yormick, a journalism student at Boston University, is a summer intern at The New Bedford Light. She can be reached at cyormick@newbedfordlight.org.