United States Green Building Council (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program may be losing clout as the leader of sustainable building certifications in America. Developers seek alternative certification methods to cut capital costs while keeping buildings green. When JDS Development Group CEO Michael Stern spoke at a recent real estate summit in New York, he didn’t mince words: “I think the LEED criteria is totally arbitrary and LEED has basically devolved into a self-sustaining revenue machine for LEED consultants without actually moving the bar that much,” he said. “You can have a LEED project basically anywhere near transportation. You qualify for enough points if you pay enough money.” Others on the panel shared his sentiments. Dissatisfaction with the cost of certification questions the data LEED shares on the costs of eligible projects. According to the Dodge Data & Analytics and United Technologies Corporation, about 70 percent of respondents quote high perceived cost as the biggest challenge to sustainable building. A Health Facilities Management report claims that LEED certification capital costs can exceed 10 percent of conventional construction. Conversely, LEED’s report, “Perspectives on Capital Costs Premiums and Operational Benefits” suggests that the capital costs of hospitals exceeding 100,000 square feet barely reach 1 percent of conventional costs. A US News editorial asserts that LEED credentials on government buildings do not add value. Moreover, taxpayer returns are lower than promised. The article suggests that, in spite of the costs, regulations are unlikely to change since governments reap millions of dollars in permit fees. Fortunately, the cost discrepancies have not turned LEED cynics away from sustainable construction. Developers are investing in alternative accreditations or use LEED as a guideline without paying for the certification. Builders have several green building certifications from which to choose.  The newest...

Though the GenX and Millennial generation are often touted as the “green living” demographic, as the New York Times reports, demand for green retirement communities is on the rise, outstripping supply and inspiring new projects and renovations. Sustainable Retirement Many of the newest senior living facilities include state-of-the-art technologies that are inherently energy and water efficient including low-flow fixtures, LED lighting, and onsite power systems including solar and geothermal. Natural light and an avoidance of toxic building materials helps developers provide living quarters that are aesthetically and philosophically pleasing to potential residents. As a bonus, many environmentally friendly options can also help property managers save money. Increased efficiency can lower energy costs by reducing electricity demands, and there is often government funding available for retrofits and renovations. Another surprising benefit – onsite power systems can also serve as backup during natural disasters or service interruptions, enabling facilities to stay up and running during a grid failure. Leading with LEED When LEED for Health Care was adapted in 2011 to include assisted living communities and nursing homes, many communities seized the chance to earn certification. Because of strict regulations within the health care industry, allowances were made to the certification process and special protocols were included to account for issues like infection control and patient privacy. LEED properties adhere to a comprehensive set of guidelines that cover not just energy use, but construction waste, water efficiency and landscaping, and greenhouse gas emissions. While LEED provides a standard for sustainability, many communities are also finding other ways to expand the notion of sustainable senior living. Even without LEED certification, many facilities prioritize recycling and walkability. Many pledge to avoid pesticides and introduce drought resistant landscaping. Some communities even make a farm-to-fork pledge, buying a majority of foodstuff and...

LEED, passivehaus, Net Zero, Living Building Challenge: these familiar certifications address the sustainability and cost-efficiency of a structure. The healthfulness and sustainability of interiors has been vastly overlooked. Interior designers with an interest in healthy dwellings have been hindered by a lack of scholarly research, minimal resources, and no quantifiable way to verify the quality of their efforts to their clients. In an effort to change that, the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), in collaboration with 11 partners, is creating the Protocols for Health and Wellness in Design. These protocols will streamline guidance for features and products that promote occupant wellbeing. Fernand Arias, Director, Strategic Initiatives at ASID explains, “The protocols are a platform to empower interior designers to be translators of health and wellness outcomes for occupants through methodologies and industry standards and certifications.” To form these protocols, ASID is bringing together experts across multiple fields including doctors, nurses, interior designers, architects, product developers, and healthcare administrators. Their concentrated efforts will forge a new certification program that can help interiors designers and their clients gauge the healthfulness of a planned or existing interior. The protocols will also incorporate existing certifications such as Healthy Product Declarations, Cradle to Cradle products, and LEED v4 as well as biophilic principals and active design. Active design is the relatively new approach to interior planning that is quickly gaining traction. In addition to measuring VOCs and air quality, access to natural light and fresh air—the basics of which many interior designers are familiar with—active design principles include floor plans and the arrangement of furniture that encourage movement and social engagement rather than sedentary behavior. ASID announced its plans for Protocols for Health and Wellness in Design at this year’s Clinton Global Initiative meeting (CGI). CGI has offered...

The demand for sustainable retail properties is growing, demonstrated by an influx in applications at accreditation organizations, top tier rents, and high trade rates. According to Lux Research, green building is now a $260 billion market with retail as one of its most vigorous verticals. Green building certification programs such as LEED for Retail have witnessed an increase in applications. The “LEED in Motion: Retail” report states that more than 8,000 retailers worldwide participate in LEED and more than 1.2 million people experience a LEED-certified retail space on a daily basis. Participating companies include Target, Kohls, Bank of America, and Starbucks, which recently celebrated its 500th LEED-certified store. The transition towards greener retail spaces corresponds with reports that retailers with LEED Gold certification or greater outperform their conventional neighbors. Studies by Nils Kok, Ph.D., executive director of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) suggests that sustainable office buildings trade at a 13 percent premium over conventional buildings. Green office structures also receive rental rates that are at least three percent higher than their conventional counterparts. “We found that LEED-certified and Energy Star-rated office buildings financially outperform their non-green peers in terms of rental rates and occupancy rates,” says Kok. For new developments, state and federal programs offer subsidies and other incentives to green retailers, helping to raise such projects’ internal rates of return by as much as six percent in less than 15 years. While there are certainly owners who pay top dollar for green retail spaces because they prioritize the environment, financial and social pressure are contributing factors behind the growth in sustainable retail popularity. Publicly-traded REITs face pressure from investors to achieve optimal energy efficiency in order to reduce operating costs and increase returns. Pressures come on a larger scale as well. An...

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) officially launched LEED v4, the newest version of the LEED green building program, at the  Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Philadelphia. Ever since the first LEED Pilot Project Program (also known as LEED Version 1.0) was introduced at the USGBC Membership Summit in August 1998, the LEED, or Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design program, has revolutionized the way buildings and communities are designed, constructed and operated. Whereas the first series of rating systems were developed to largely address the needs of owner-occupied new construction commercial buildings, the program has grown, evolved and expanded to encompass the different project development and delivery processes that exist in the U.S. building design and construction market, through rating systems for specific building typologies, sectors and project scopes: Core & Shell Development, New Construction and Major Renovations, Schools, Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, Neighborhood Development, Retail, Healthcare, Homes, and Commercial Interiors. Moreover, LEED seeks to accelerate green building demand, delivery and accessibility and optimize the use of natural resources. While still based on the essential principles advocated by its previous versions, LEED v4 brings a plus of coherence and efficiency to the whole process. “LEED v4 is a quantum leap for LEED,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chair, USGBC. “Over the past 15 years, LEED has fundamentally revolutionized how we design, construct, operate and maintain our buildings and communities. LEED has created a completely new industry of business enterprise committed to energy savings and efficiency. LEED v4 is as much a testament to the achievements of LEED project teams around the world as it is to the green building community’s ambition to create significant global and local change through resource-efficient, cost-effective green buildings.” The program’s goal is to foster...

A thirst for improved building performance, coupled with growing awareness of the planet’s limited resources, have contributed to a new series of impressive commercial developments that boast highly efficient environments as well as reduced carbon footprints. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has played a major part in the worldwide growth of the green building movement. Now, USGBC is preparing the launch of the next version of its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system, LEED v4. Through its many programs and green initiatives, USGBC seeks to provide eco-minded developers with actual data, knowledgeable perspectives and insight on the greening process with the sole purpose of helping them build communities that are environmentally sensitive, energy-efficient and ultimately enhance quality of life. LEED applies to a broad range of projects, from single-family homes to office buildings, multifamily, healthcare and industrial outfits. Essentially, it provides third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built around green principles. Using strict parameters, LEED measures metrics such as energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions, materials and resources, indoor air quality, and the overall environmental impact of a project. In addition to promoting healthy living and sustainable design, LEED provides developers and property owners with tools to increase asset value, lower operating costs and even qualify for money-saving incentives, like tax rebates and zoning allowances. Lower energy and water bills, increased comfort, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, less exposure to indoor pollutants and toxins, and lower maintenance costs are just a few of the benefits associated to living in a LEED-certified environment. LEED v4 continues USGBC’s mission to spur transformation of the built environemnt toward zero-energy green buildings,  while also providing a new suite of features designed to help streamline the certification process. Changes from LEED 2009 are seen...

Whether municipally mandated, LEED encouraged or for altruistic reasons, commercial property owners and managers are taking steps to encourage recycling. It can be challenging. Ultimately, it falls to the tenant and the cleaning crew—and in the case of retail properties, the general public—to comply with the program. But some creative efforts are producing results. Office properties provide a particularly strong opportunity for managers to encourage recycling through multiple channels of contact. A comprehensive program of education for building occupants and vendors is the centerpiece of encouraging participation. Last year, SL Green Realty Corp. and its vendor, IESI Corp., held town hall meetings at more than 30 office buildings in the company’s metropolitan New York City market. They also met separately with maintenance staff at the properties. Director of sustainability Jason Black reported that materials separation improved noticeably after the meetings. SL Green’s 2013 outreach effort will follow the town-hall format, with individual tenant meetings. Outreach also helps identify one person in every office who is willing to champion recycling and serve as the recycling liaison. Additional recycling containers are on the way, as well. Indeed, providing plenty of collection bins goes a long way toward making recycling easy, and many owners, like Swig Equities, offer opportunities for tenants to dispose of items that are more challenging to recycle, as well. Swig’s Mills Building in San Francisco, for instance, works with Green Citizen, an environmental services company, to organize e-waste recycling drives, offer pickups of discarded electronic equipment and provide an on-site kiosk for disposal of batteries, toner cartridges, cellphones and other small items. While incorporating spaces for recycling categories is standard practice for new building design, though, it can be more challenging to find appropriate spaces in older properties. Unlike buildings designed to accommodate...

The concept of sustainable design is taking significant steps forward, according to one expert, but it still has a way to go. While efforts are expanding into the planning stages and incorporating operations and asset management as well, hard data evidence of results are still missing, affirms Tom Paladino, founder of consulting firm Paladino and Co. Without that data, most developers are treating new-construction efforts on a one-off basis rather than taking a more programmatic approach to sustainable construction. Certification programs are both proliferating and expanding, offering more options to put an official seal of approval on local materials, efficiency measures and other improvements. And research is picking up, too, for instance through the Greenprint Foundation, which is collecting data from a growing number of companies to track carbon emissions, with some very lofty goals for the industry at large. But those efforts are focused on cleaning up the environment, Paladino notes, who was instrumental in developing the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification program, directed its pilot program and has been technical editor and author of the version 4 reference guides. While environmental improvements are certainly a worthwhile pursuit, nobody is really studying property performance to determine the best business results. For instance, while the industry can measure a leasable area, opinions differ on specifics that combine to create a daylit building that contributes to productivity gain—let alone can they precisely measure what that productivity gain is. The result is that only a few developers are approaching application of sustainable design in multiple projects systematically, with business performance goals in mind. Expansion of the sustainability team might help further those tracking efforts. While there are 200,000 LEED APs out in the market now, there are few other types...

As an industry leader in sustainable development, Portland-based Yardi client Gerding Edlen is a step ahead when it comes to earth-friendly trends in apartment living. “Because we have such a passion for developing sustainable buildings, we wanted to ensure we were transferring the vision we have during development into the day to day management of the properties,” says Julia Razonable, Gerding Edlen Management’s Director of Operations. “One of the next ways to push the boundary in sustainability is to influence human behavior,” Julia explained. Gerding Edlen is dedicated to creating communities in its multifamily developments, fostering interaction between residents and providing a sense of attachment to the neighborhood beyond the property as well. The idea is to give people the environment and tools to live healthier, more-earth friendly lives. A recent event at one of their Portland communities, Cocktails and Compost, brought 100 residents together for drinks, distribution of compost bins, and a tutorial on how to compost at home. Portland has a citywide mandate for single family homes to compost their natural food and yard waste, and Gerding Edlen is fostering that adoption in multifamily complexes, too. “It was also our first zero waste event,” Julia mentioned. “All of the cups, plates, and napkins we used could be composted.” Julia, who studied sociology and psychology at Portland State University, says that sharing information and social connections between residents is very important. Each of the apartment communities she oversees has its own blog and Facebook page, where conversations range from when and where to find the next neighborhood farmer’s market to how to clean in a more environmentally friendly way. Well-developed social media networks have helped Gerding Edlen’s advertising outreach approach go green, too. The company also focuses great attention on the concept of...

Building design has taken a big leap forward in the past decade. There is more attention paid to sustainability and efficiency, and buildings are better integrated into their environments, which by default makes them more attractive than the box-like and sometimes fortress-style structures of the ‘70s and ‘80s. However, such efforts still have a long way to go, and building owners and developers need to play a much bigger role in how properties are designed in order to achieve the increased sustainability and efficiencies that will be demanded by tenants and even required by municipalities in the years to come. Indeed, engineering firm Syska Hennessy Group co-presidents Gary Brennen and Cyrus Izzo believe there needs to be a much more collaborative approach to development than tends to be the case today. The owner, design team, contractor and even facility operator tend to be “in various corners, kind of staking their claim and watching just their areas of interest,” noted Izzo. But ensuring the “right partner DNA,” aligning their interests from the beginning and sufficiently involving the owner/developer in the decision-making process is critical to what Brennen describes as “engineering the architecture.” “Sometimes you get trapped with the aesthetic, but performance matters in these kinds of high-performance, sustainable buildings,” he noted. Owners need to ask questions like: How is the building massed? How is it oriented? What’s the glass and daylight condition? How do I keep solar gain out but good daylight in? “You’ve got to tune the design from day one … and then continue to tune the building after you occupy it to get the kind of results you want.” That may require a 180-degree shift in thinking from the current tendency to check off the items needed to achieve a LEED rating....