Page 176 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

LEARNING FROM A LEED PILOT PROJECT 155

Figure 5.5 McDonald’s at Abercorn Common (designed by Adams +
Associates Architecture, Mooresville, NC)

Shops 600

Our out-parcel smaller retail building, Shops 600, was built near the end of the first
phase of Abercorn Common’s redevelopment, on the area previously occupied by the
original McDonald’s building. The building contains 16,000 square feet of retail space
in six storefronts. Because the building facade faces west, the doors and windows on
the fronts of the stores have six-foot canopies to shield them from the afternoon sun.
By the time we were ready to design and start constructing Shops 600, we had
learned a lot about what worked and what didn’t work in creating a LEED certified
retail building for coastal Georgia. In our plans, we decided not to incorporate
porous concrete, 30 percent fresh air requirements, or MERV 13 air filters because
they are more difficult to manage in our climate. (Experience has taught us MERV
11 filters are a better choice, since they allow increased airflow.) Knowledge we
gained from the first phase of Abercorn Common’s redevelopment paid off dramati-
cally—our design review and value engineering session for this new building lasted
about one hour.
Materials used for the project were selected with an eye to high-recycled content.
For example, we specified that our drywall come from a plant in Tampa whose prod-