At about noon today, I unveiled the plague designating Blacksburg Motor Company a LEED Platinum building. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It is a third party rating system that grades your building on being sustainable. There are four different levels, Platinum being the highest.
Here are some statistics that make the achievement of Platinum at Blacksburg Motor all the more impressive. There are 3082 LEED Certified construction projects worldwide according to the USGBC website. There are 8282 construction projects which are registered with LEED but have not yet received certification.
Platinum is the highest LEED rating. Worldwide, only 175 construction projects have achieved LEED platinum, 5% of all certified projects. Buildings that have attained this rigorous level of LEED certification are among the greenest projects in the world. As of June, 2010, there were only 175 Platinum LEED certified construction projects in the world. Of those, only a handful were historic renovations.
In Virginia, there are only three Platinum LEED certified construction projects. Only one, Moseley Architects Building in Richmond is also an historic renovation.
So, we are one of 175 in the World, and only one of three in Virginia. Blacksburg Motor is in one of a handful in the world that involved historic renovation.
And, all of this was accomplished by a net square footage cost that was less than new construction. (This includes grants and historic tax credits)
Blacskburg Motor is an accomplishment to celebrate!
Very impressive and truly a great project.
Pretending that very expensive project was a bargain by pretending that grants and tax credits are not also using the publics funds is typical political double-think gobbledygook. Mortgaging the future to supposedly preserve the past is some sort of enlightened behavior?
Tom, I always appreciate your insight, but I’ll have to challenge you on this one.
The job of town council is to manage the town budget with an eye towards net cost to the taxpayers of Blacksburg.
Once the decision was made that more space was needed, what was the best way to go about providing that space?
One option was to purchase land and build a new building. Because of the need to be close to the current building, this would also have involved demolition of some existing structure.
The second was to restore an older building, use historic tax credits, and lower that net cost to Blacksburg.
Which is more prudent?
To make the argument that we should not have applied for those tax credits because of an opposition to any tax incentives is akin to saying a homeowner should not deduct interest on their home mortgage. If that is your argument, I cede the point.
If your opposition is based on the premise that we should not accept or apply for state and federal money, we need to take that argument to it logical conclusion – we don’t accept money for roads, school, police, etc.
But if the end goal is to make Blacksburg dollars go further and accomplish more with less from our bank account, then I submit we did the right thing.
It is not double talk. I have added the net cost numbers up many times and the result is the same. Blacksburg paid less per square foot for a renovated Blacksburg Motor building than we would have paid for a new building.
I could live with the town staying within its own means and not hiring people to constantly apply for public money grants. But having the town do that would be like trying to break a junkie of his heroin habit.
It is in fashion to criticize corporations for not being good citizens, but the town is above reproach for ignoring their role in adding to the national deficit, so long as it saves (somebody else’s) money on its local projects?
Ron, how about comparing utility bills for similar town facilities. LEED seems to be another one of these feel good programs that does not emphasize actual results. Just a way for consultants and contractors to make extra money.
Phlip,
We anticipate the cost savings in utility bills to be significant. It’s a good idea to keep a running comparison. From time to time, I’ll be happy to up date those numbers.