Vancouver gears up to require private projects to reach LEED silver
Hang onto your hats Seattle, our neighbor Vancouver, B.C., is gearing up to require all private developments in the city meet LEED silver.
Does this news make you go doe-eyed and giggly or does it stop your heart like a cold shower in January?
Either way, take a deep breath. It isn’t going to happen anytime soon in Seattle.
Diane Sugimura, director of the Seattle Department of Planning and Development, said Seattle is “looking at a wide range of things” to make buildings more efficient and will be watching Vancouver closely to see how it works with the planned LEED policy and developers. So it is a possibility, but not in the near future. Seattle also tends to take its time with these decisions, so there will most likely be a long lead time, should it ever come to be.
In Vancouver though, Brent Toderian, director of planning for the city, is instigating some major changes. To read Toderian’s blog, press here.
Toderian spoke at the Globe2008 Conference last week. Already, Vancouver requires all municipal buildings to reach LEED gold, but that’s not enough, he said. Neither is requiring LEED certified. He said, ”LEED certified is just not good enough if you’re in a city.”
Seattle currently requires every publicly funded building over 5,000 square feet and every renovation of more than 50 percent assessed value, meet LEED silver certification. Some say that goes too far, others say it doesn’t go far enough.
Another speaker at the conference, Mazyar Mortazavi, a developer of green projects from TAS DesignBuild in Toronto, said requiring private projects to go green is well and good, but the program better consider how to bring buildings and developers along with it. “(It) has to provide tools (so) its not just some side thing,” he said.
Is Mortazavi right? What kind of tools should Vancouver provide? Is there anything a city can do to make this process easier for a developer, owner, or anyone in the construction industry, if a city is determined to make a requirement like this?
The policy is not yet in effect in Vancouver, though the city is moving in that directoion. Toderian also said the city is working to modify the building code to support green building practices for all buildings.
Toderian mentioned One Planet Living and Vancouver’s challenge to meet its goals. To learn more about One Planet Living, read an article I wrote about it in December here or visit http://www.oneplanetliving.org/.
So is this the only way green building will become mainstream? Is this the perfect balance between green and government, or is it too much? Is One Planet Living even feasible? Have you worked on a project that you think would be a best-case example? Tell me your thoughts….
Tags: LEED, Projects, Seattle, Vancouver BC
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March 21st, 2008 at 11:23 pm
IMO it is necessary and very positive thing that government begins to hold builders and developers to these standards. I agree with Mortazavi that there needs to be “tools” in order to implement this- it can’t just be required without updating building codes.
Without goverment getting involved, why would changed be implemented (in this capacity anyway)? From what I see on a daily basis, I don’t think that Buyers in the market are creating enough of a demand for these practices. Not enough to have developers meet LEED certs on their own anyway.
Props to Vancouver- I hope Seattle follows suit sooner rather than later.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:35 am
[...] to note, Vancouver (BC) is gearing up to require all private developments to be LEED Silver certified. Does anyone think Seattle should follow suit? I am also interested to hear what the consumer [...]