February/March 2009
Neigborhood Development
C O N T E N T S
Executive Director's Corner: Crossing The Potomoc
LEED: Fort Carson Building Awarded First Army LEED Gold
Neighborhood Development: LEED Neighborhood Development in Colorado
Recyling News: Some Thoughts on Recycling Old Office Furnishings
Sustainable Development: Creating a Sustainable Future
Getting Green Done: Forgive Me Father, I Don't Have the Money
Sustainable Strategy: Creating Effective Collaboration and Leadership Tactics
Executive Director's Corner: Major Speaker Announced for May Conference
Metro Branch Update: Denver Metro Branch is Looking for Volunteers
VISION
Promote responsibility for Colorado's environmental legacy.
MISSION
Advance and promote sustainable planning, design, construction and operation of the built environment through education, improving industry guidelines, policy advocacy, and information and resource sharing.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dana Kose, Chair
Universal Development Company
Jim Bradburn, Vice Chair, Chair Elect
RMH Group
Megan Christensen, Secretary
US LendLease Communities
Sebastian De Atucha, Treasurer
3BY
Clay Benson, Director at Large
Mortenson Construction
Mike Lowell, Director, Advocacy
US GSA
Bobby Molinary, Director, Membership
Julie Edwards, Director, Education
Oz Architecture
Matt Arabasz, Director,Northern Colorado Branch
RB+B Architects, Inc.
Joshua Radoff, Director, Resource Development, and Communications
YRG Sustainability Consultants
Bethany Trumble, Director, Southern Colorado Branch
Farnsworth Group, Inc.
Liz Sharrer, Director, Metro Branch
Holland & Hart
Mike Kolesar, Director, Emerging Green Builders
Facilities Engineering Associates
Deb Kleinman
Executive Director,
USGBC Colorado Chapter
Colorado Building Green is the official newsletter of the U.S. Green Building Council – Colorado Chapter, and is published bi-monthly. If you are interested in submiting a story, ideas or other information for publication, please contact the editor at dgloffreda@msn.com
LEED Neigborhood Development In Colorado
LEED-ND has not gone without its growing pains
By Conor Merrigan, Consultant, YRG sustainability
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The new version requires at least one LEED (or limited equivalent) building on each project and improved levels of building energy and indoor water efficiency (10% better than ASHRAE 90.1-2007 and 20% better than efficient water standards, respectively) in aggregate project wide. While these goals are laudable and ultimately necessary to help ensure these new projects are meeting aggressive climate change goals, it is valid to raise the age-old question of whether the system is striving for market adoption or transformation through leadership. There has always been a careful toeing of that line in order to achieve maximum impact, but from this author’s experience with mixed-use developers it is fairly certain that a number of projects that may have been encouraged to apply for certification in the pilot may not do so if these requirements remain intact. This is true due to the facts that some horizontal developers have extremely limited control over how the project is built up and because the cost of energy modeling and LEED for particular buildings could be prohibitive.
Rather than require LEED certification and efficiency performance goals for individual buildings in the development, LEED-ND would be better off remaining similar to the pilot version and giving credit for such measures. Also, by widening the allowance of rating systems to include programs like Green Communities and Built Green, developers could be given credit for various levels of green that are not so rigid and could be more affordable.. One could speculate that the new requirements were added due to a lack of market sophistication as an effort to not dilute the other LEED rating systems; i.e. for most consumers a LEED by any other name is still LEED, but that misses the point of a system that measures development in terms of design aspects such as proximity and mix of uses that will have the greatest lifetime effecton total carbon use.
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LEED-ND is not a perfect system but one of its strengths is the forum for public input that drives continuing improvement and adaptation to the market and to sustainability.. As the system continues to grow, we hope it will continue to more appropriately address extremely large projects, give appropriate weight to managing transportation and growing food on site just as we credit it for capturing the elements of good urban design, properly crediting infill projects and introducing strategies that are innovative and necessary. What is certain is that the process will continue to be lively and the product will continue to drive development to be ever more sustainable.
The USGBC Colorado chapter has formed a LEED-ND Interest group that hosts monthly meetings in Denver. For more information, please contact the author at cmerrigan@yrgsustainability.com.