MassDevelopment and the Massachusetts Cultural Council have provided a $30,000 Cultural Facilities Fund grant to the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst.

The environmental learning center will use grant funds to design a sustainable facility at Hampshire College as the center’s new home. The Hitchcock Center will also use the grant for facility planning at its current location in Amherst.

"The Hitchcock Center’s new facility will provide an innovative example of sustainable building and living," MassDevelopment President and CEO Marty Jones said in a statement. "Future Massachusetts developments can learn from the new structure at Hampshire College, and we’re pleased to provide this grant so the center [can] expand the reach of its sustainable education."

The envisioned 8,000-square-foot building to be the first environmental learning center to achieve net-zero energy and net-zero water; demonstrate enduring, dynamic building systems that actively model and mimic key ecological cycles and systems; and have custom-designed, hands-on teaching curricula and exhibits that use the building as an active tool to teach the foundational principles of sustainability. It will meet or exceed the highest standards of green building, including the Living Building Challenge Certification.