Page 201 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

EXISTING BUILDINGS 179

Figure 6.2 LEED for existing buildings scorecard for Crestwood.

We explored non-roof heat island reduction (Credit 6.1 under the Sustainable Sites
category), thinking that since our site had lots of trees already, we might be able to
pretty easily meet the 30 percent shaded requirement for heat island reduction. We
hired an environmental design firm, Ecos Environmental Design, to calculate the
amount of shade on our site according to the LEED handbook guidelines, and found
we were 19 percent shaded with our current tree cover. Only 11 percent to go. Ecos
created two plans for adding trees and shade to the parking areas. One option proposed
adding fifty-two canopy trees and six ornamental trees and removing seven parking
spaces; the other option proposed adding forty-eight canopy trees and removing eleven
parking spaces. Ultimately, a simple cost-benefit analysis indicated that additional