Page 231 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

REALIZING THE VALUE OF GREEN FOR KEY USERS 209

Naming Rights
In our presentation to an anchor tenant for Birmingham Federal Reserve & Tower, we
proposed as an option the opportunity to place the tenant’s name on the building. The
opportunity can objectively be quantified by market comparables for billboard sig-
nage (estimated conservatively to be worth $35,000 annually), with the added cachet
that the tenant would link its brand to the first green high-rise complex in the city.
Although we have not factored this into our analysis, it is worthy of mention simply
because there is potential value capture.

INDIRECT REVENUE ENHANCEMENT:
BRANDING VALUE
Relative to current alternatives, the Birmingham Federal Reserve & Tower project
contemplates the following indirect revenue enhancing opportunities through brand-
ing value. Companies (such as Melaver, Inc.) that are early entrants into the sustain-
ability movement are integrally associated with green. So too are early signature
single-tenant owner-occupied buildings such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s
Philip Merrill Environmental Center in Annapolis, Maryland or Interface, Inc.’s show-
room in Atlanta, Georgia, or the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental
Studies at Oberlin College in Ohio. Various first-generation books touting the finan-
cial merits of sustainability inevitably include branding and enhanced reputation as
aspects of value creation that a business should factor into its decision to embracing a
triple bottom line. As green becomes more mainstream, however, the issue of brand-
ing and reputation becomes more complicated.
While the speed at which green is becoming more mainstream is rapid, there still,
unfortunately, are only a fraction of actual green buildings out there. In many mar-
kets—Birmingham among them—the green product is limited or non-existent. These
are markets that offer the promise of first or early-mover advantage. As such, there is
an added value to a company’s reputation by making a move, literally, into a LEED
building in a market where such buildings are few and far between. However, two
caveats are in order:

1 Solely occupying space in a green building is not much of value-add to a com-
pany’s reputation. Such occupancy needs to go hand in hand with a company’s
underlying values and practices. Otherwise, the lack of alignment between where a
company’s offices are located and how it conducts business are not only readily
apparent but could constitute a possible liability, potentially exposing the company
to charges of greenwash (more about this in Chapter 10). As Bama Athreya of the
U.S.-based International Labor Rights Forum has noted regarding brand cam-
paigns, “Let’s face it, hypocrites are far more interesting than mere wrongdoers.” 7
A business should shy well away from promoting its green digs unless its offices
are a visible manifestation of a much deeper commitment to green practices. In
short, while there are still branding opportunities out there, proceed cautiously and
let your practices do the talking.