Gold standard: LEED-certified building a product of collaboration - Boston Business Journal:

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The joint venture between The , with the help of architecturaocompany , resulted in a 316,000-square-foot green buildinf that has been pre-certified to receive the ’s LEED gold National Grid’s new headquarters, situated in the Reservoir Woods east campus in Waltham, will includde a host of green design 34 in all, from rooftop solar panelsw to systems that recapture stormwater and use it for sewager systems. Once completed, the $135 million building will be one of the largesr green commercial buildings in thestate (the platinum-certifier Genzyme Center in Cambridge being “It was clear it was going to be a collaboration (with National Grid).
They did have an extremel active role throughoutthe process, and they had very ambitioua goals for the environmental sustainabilityh of the building,” said Davis. The collaboration betwee n Davis, Marcus and National Grid startecd when the utility was looking for space after its acquisition ofin 2007. It knew it needed a facility that would meet not only the physical need s ofthe company, but serve as an examplw to customers that it was dedicatedd to environmental stewardship. “We are goingy to be significantly growingour energy-efficiencyh program and for us to be able to go in to there is an issuee of credibility,” said Tom King, president of Nationaol Grid’s U.S.
-based operations. “It’s a leadership When it settled upon Reservoir Woods as itsnew home, Nationakl Grid established a lofty goal for its builde to suit construction: to achieve an 80 percent reductioh in its greenhouse gas emissiona by 2050. To do this, the company invested in sustainably harvestedbuilding materials, high-efficiency heating and cooling systeme and even sunshades on south-facing windows to keep the building warm in the wintef and cool in the summer. The hardest part of designinh the building was notits size, but makinf the step from LEED silver to LEED gold withouft breaking the bank.
“You can go from certified to silver without much trouble orextra cost,” said Michaek Hass, the project’s “To get up to gold is a much biggeer hurdle. We went through a lot of idease and looked at what was Some ideas, like powering the building with fuel cell were not cost effective, Hass said. But all-in-all, the group was able to integratse the vast majority of its 55 green featurews talked about at a price well belowthe $60 to $80 per squarer foot premium on LEED gold Marcus said.