Project Overview
The Kirkbride Center is a 390,000-square-foot campus consisting of six buildings dedicated to behavioral health and community social services. Designated as a National Historic Landmark, the 19th century former Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital building was revitalized by CoreCare to become one of the region’s largest community healthcare, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers.
PEA, Counterpointe Sustainable Real Estate (CounterpointeSRE), and Kirkbride Realty Corporation executed $4,333,846 in C-PACE financing in June 2021. The non-recourse, low-cost capital enabled CoreCare to modernize the campus’s energy-intensive infrastructure, improving patient care and thermal comfort without requiring upfront capital expenditure or impacting credit capacity.
$4.3 million
$92,986
Annual energy savings
668 Mt
Annual avoided carbon emissions
Project Details
C-PACE financing was used to fund critical boiler plant improvements and retroactive chiller system upgrades for the 17-acre West Philadelphia healthcare campus, enhancing system reliability and overall energy efficiency. C-PACE funds covered the following building improvements:
- Replacement of four end-of-life steam boilers and associated equipment with two new high-efficiency 500-BHP steam boilers, increasing fuel-to-steam efficiency from 65% to 85%
- Retroactive replacement of two out-of-service 300-ton chillers with high-efficiency, variable-speed chillers
These C-PACE-funded infrastructure upgrades yielded an estimated $92,986 in annual utility cost savings, reducing energy consumption by 10,492 MMBtu per year and avoiding nearly 700 tons of annual carbon emissions.


