Conservation in Unconventional Spaces – Bat Habitats
At Shaker Trace Nursery, Great Parks of Hamilton County pursued the adaptive reuse of a more than 100-year-old barn, that was also home to a colony of bats, transforming it from a long-used seed-drying and operations facility into a new education and event space. Through close collaboration among Great Parks’ Conservation team, a University of Cincinnati Bat Ecologist, Pepper Construction, and emersion DESIGN, the team developed a plan to renovate the barn as a co-inhabited facility.
While there is extensive research on ways to exclude bats, far fewer studies examine how to accommodate them while maintaining safe human occupancy. Shaker Trace now serves as that case study.
