Page 187 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

LEARNING FROM A LEED PILOT PROJECT 165

■ Being firmer and more knowledgeable about specifying the sizes of HVAC units
per tenant. There is significantly greater variability in tonnage per square foot than
we feel is warranted.
■ Changing how we handle fresh air and dehumidification. At Abercorn Common, the
approach has been to supercool tenant spaces and then re-heat them. We believe
that an energy recovery system, using exhaust rather than supercooling, would be a
preferable strategy.
■ Improving energy efficiency in the building envelope by use of spray foam insula-
tion, which removes all unintended air infiltration, rather than fiberglass batts.
■ Installing better performing glass with lower solar heat gain coefficient.
■ Utilizing pavers in the parking lot rather than porous pavement, which isn’t perco-
lating as well as we’d like.
■ Working more proactively with the city so as to use our rainwater capture system
for sewage conveyance, as well as for landscape irrigation. In 2008, the City of
Savannah (working in concert with members of our staff) became one of the first
municipalities in the country to formally adopt Appendix C of the International
Plumbing Code (IPC) on graywater use. We regret not having made this push ear-
lier on.
■ Using a green roof specialist or green roof manufacturer to guide us in the design of
our green roof system, rather than having a general architect provide this service.
■ Installing 1 pint per flush (ppf) water urinals rather than the waterless urinals in our
retail spaces. When a real estate company manages a facility (see the Crestwood
Building, Chapter 6), use of waterless urinals is fine since there is direct oversight
of the maintenance of the system. However, in a retail environment, where tenants
manage the facilities themselves, waterless urinals are not ideal and probably
should be replaced with these simpler 1 ppf water urinals
■ Inserting language in lease documents that enables us to review energy and water
usage for documentation and monitoring.

With this long litany of things we did wrong (or at least inexpertly)—and it’s hardly
a complete or exhaustive list—the question begs to be asked: Did we do anything
right? I think so. We made the decision early on to make Abercorn Common a LEED
project, irrespective of the unknowns we were likely to face. Trivial or irresponsible?
I don’t think so. A quick story will help bring the point home.
There’s a scene from the movie, Shakespeare in Love, which my colleagues and I
sometimes refer to in the context of our green development work. In the film, the
upcoming first production of Romeo and Juliet is going to hell in a handbasket. The
actor playing Romeo has decided not to show up. The actor playing Juliet has con-
tracted laryngitis. The actor who gives the opening speech in the play, a tailor by pro-
fession, can’t stop stuttering. The Master of the Revels for Queen Elizabeth has
decided to close the famous Rose Theater, so the company can’t even find a theater to
produce the play in. And in the midst of all this mayhem, William Shakespeare is in
an absolute panic. He tells Philip Henslowe, the businessman charged with producing