The Revitalist

On May 19th the US Green Building Council released V.3, I think they are calling it LEED 2009.
I learned about this from Wendy Nicholas, Director of the Northeast Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She also directed me to a posting on the National trust blog by Barbara A. Campagna, AIA LEED AP of Graham Gund Architects.
As a developer trying to do preservation redevelopment, I would like to think I am building in a sustainable and responsible fashion but have been frustrated that the emerging best standard for green buildings, the LEED standard, has not been attainable for preservation projects such as ours. We recently did an analysis of a 75,000 mill redevelopment effort and determined that the added cost of basic LEED certification was between $7.50 and $10.00/ sq ft. We could not conclude that there was any demonstrable benefit to income. Worse, we received an equal point score for re-using a building or having covered bike storage. Our buildings are usually 120+ year-old brick and timber mills in downtown settings.