Architect plays key role in Learning Center design

Real Estate Weekly, Nov 13, 1996

This may sound like "Mission Impossible," but to Vibeke Koszeghy, an architect with Con Edison, this assignment sounded like the design challenge of a lifetime.

"The Learning Center has now been open for three years, thousands of employees have been trained, and I haven't heard a complaint yet, so I feel the mission was accomplished," said a confident Koszeghy.

Located in Long Island City with spectacular water views of the United Nations Building and the Midtown skyline, the 185,000 square-foot Learning Center is one of New York's best kept secrets. Just one train stop from Grand Central Terminal, the nine-acre site boasts a 250-seat auditorium/meeting center, six computer classrooms, a technical business library complete with Internet access, a power plant simulator, several customized energy-specific training sites and enough parking for nearly 350 cars.

The center's primary objective is retraining Con Edison employees for new skills and responsibilities in an effort to reduce customer costs. Use of the Queens center as a convenient, cost-effective business and meeting center alternative to Manhattan locations is now being explored. Employees from NYNEX undergoing utility pole training are already taking advantage of the center's outdoor training area. In addition to the pole climbing area, a realistic street setting is complete with simulated custom homes designed for training crews to detect gas leaks or electrical faults.

This current reality is quite a contrast from what Koszeghy and other members of the Con Edison design team confronted when the project began in 1992. The original structure was a seven-story bakery built in 1923. Con Edison purchased the property in 1964 from American Bakeries, reconfigured the frame into a three-story building, and later used it as a working location for dispatching field crews and a cable storage area.

"It was basically a 'no frills' shop area with bare concrete floors, corrugated walls, and minimal lighting," said Koszeghy, a 17-year Con Edison veteran, and the company's only female architect.

The entire building was stripped to a shell. All electrical and plumbing systems were gutted, stairwells were torn down and the outer brick skins were demolished. This left the building literally open from end to end - and also open for new design ideas.

"We wanted to communicate to our employees that Con Edison sees them as the company's greatest asset," said Maria Logis, Learning Center General Manager. "This required, among other things, incorporating state-of-the-art design functionality to ensure an environment conducive to learning."

The Con Edison design team worked jointly with a group of consultants, contractors and the Switzer Group, a New York-based space planning and interior design team. The aim was to make the building practical, virtually maintenance free, durable and aesthetically pleasing.

"One of the biggest design challenges was the enormous diversity of this project," said Koszeghy. "The interior room designs ranged from business offices and a working kitchen to a mock 'Main Street' created for outdoor pipeline training, and a university-styled library."

To help keep the project on schedule, the team routinely went directly to material manufacturers to make sure ordered specifications were accurate and that quality control was maintained. The strategy worked. Completed in 1993, the Learning Center started off exceeding company expectations. The same year, the Queens Chamber of Commerce presented the center its Award for Excellence in Design.

Koszeghy, a native of Denmark, said her love of design began in her teenage years when she took a summer job at an architect's office. Later she received a bachelor's degree from an architectural school whose programs were equally attended by as many women as men.

"In Denmark, becoming an architect was never questioned as being a non-traditional career," Koszeghy said. "I knew at age 16 what career I wanted to pursue and all of the opportunities were available to me."

After graduation Koszeghy came to the U.S. and furthered her studies in lighting design at New York University. She and her husband Richard, who is also an architect, live in Hoboken, NJ.

As for the future of the Learning Center, she is very confident: "The design has a flexible infrastructure that should meet the educational and training demands of the utility industry for the future and beyond."