Julia C. Lathrop Homes is a Chicago Housing Authority public housing project located on the near Northwest side of Chicago, Illinois, bordered by the neighborhoods of Bucktown and Roscoe Village. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and is currently undergoing restoration. The Lathrop Homes development consists of two-story brick row houses and three- and four-story apartment buildings separated by landscaped courtyards that are linked by small archways in a campus-like arrangement. There are a total of 925 units on 35.5 acres of land, approximately three and a half square blocks.  

dbHMS provided a conceptual analysis to optimize the energy performance of the buildings on-site and to determine the feasibility of implementing district scale systems.  The analysis compared four building envelope alternatives, four building level HVAC alternatives and two district infrastructure systems to optimize the overall building energy performance. The analysis of the district scale MEP systems will allow for future phases of the project to be incorporated at a later date with allowance for phased construction and life cycle costs.  Additionally, dbHMS assisted with compiling construction costs and developing energy usage and cost data to compare a menu of system alternatives.