Page 172 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

LEARNING FROM A LEED PILOT PROJECT 151

with a construction budget of $57 per square foot and ended up spending $65 per
square foot. With better insulation in the walls and ceiling, the white roof membrane,
and a higher-efficiency HVAC unit, they were able to cut twenty tons of HVAC from
their prototype. High-efficiency units cost more initially, but less equipment is
required and they use less electricity. Circuit City moved into its Abercorn Common
store in the summer of 2004.
We believe that the benefits we can provide our tenants accrue directly to their bot-
tom lines, like lower electricity and water bills and lower fees for common area main-
tenance. Our tenants’lowered cost structure and higher profitability in turn helps make
our developments more desirable. Retail is retail, after all, and the bottom line is the
priority. A newer tenant, ULTA, part of the cosmetics and skincare retail chain, was
able to reduce the HVAC load design for its Abercorn Common store, reducing the
load from 55 tons to 47.5 tons, a savings of 15 percent.
There are, however, initial findings that still have us somewhat puzzled. Circuit
City, for example, has provided us with figures for their electricity and gas consump-
tion for Abercorn Common as well as for two comparison stores—one in nearby
Brunswick, Georgia and another in Atlanta, which has somewhat different climate
conditions. The results of this side-by-side comparison indicate that Circuit City’s
energy costs per square foot are actually higher at Abercorn Common than at the com-
parison locations (see Table 5.3). Internal debates around this issue have been inter-
esting. Some on staff contend that the energy use of Circuit City would have been
higher had a conventional building envelope been constructed. It’s a challenging issue,
since the ostensible benchmark is a building that was never built in the first place. The
local manager of Circuit City has a different theory, believing that the cause of this
unexpected utility premium is actually owing to the building’s greater thermal insula-
tion. Circuit City runs, among other things, a bank of TV monitors throughout its hours
of operation. Circuit City management believes that heat created by the electronic
devices builds up within the store, resulting in increased air conditioning use. This is a
relatively new finding for us, one that will require further analysis. But this particular
story does bear out our belief in the law of unintended consequences, as well as the fact
that many aspects of green design and implementation are still not mastered.
Lighting in the parking lots at Abercorn Common was designed to conserve energy
and reduce light pollution. Box lights mounted on slightly lower poles shine straight

TABLE 5.3 UTILITY COMPARISON AT THREE CIRCUIT CITY STORES

STORE SIZE (SQ. FT.) ELECTRIC/SQ. FT. GAS/SQ. FT. TOTAL COST COST/SQ. FT.
Savannah 34,000 $2.73 $0.02 $93,582.60 $2.75
Brunswick 20,500 $2.24 $0.19 $49,858.85 $2.43
Atlanta 33,700 $2.18 $0.10 $76,994.40 $2.28