Getting a LEED Gold certification for the use of sustainable green-building techniques is a hard enough thing to achieve that, when you can do it for a historic renovation project, you're in pretty exclusive company. Boston's First Church of Christ, Scientist. A 1905 structure at President Lincoln's Cottage in Washington, DC. The Council on Foreign Relations HQ in the capitol... to name a few prominent examples.
While it's hard to win the certification for a single project, it's even rarer to garner the certification for a multi-building campus to get that certification across it's entire expanse.
But that's what Golden Belt has done, with developer Scientific Properties announcing Monday that it became the first Gold-certified historic campus in the southeast US.
The team led by Scientific's Gary Kueber -- no stranger to preservation or the blogosphere, with his popular sidelight web site Endangered Durham -- "earned every LEED point we submitted," Kueber noted in a press release. From the press release:
From selecting a former brownfield site to reusing 95% of the existing walls, ceilings and roof, recycling defines Golden Belt. The project reuses existing buildings with at least 10% of all new construction materials regionally/locally sourced and 75% of construction waste recycled.
LEED certification at Golden Belt also meant the inclusion of water conserving fixtures and sustainably harvested materials like bamboo that help conserve natural resources. Abundant windows with insulated, solar-shaded glass provide copious amounts of natural light and contribute to Golden Belt’s 35% campus-wide energy savings....
A talented team was assembled to achieve Gold certification at Golden Belt. Belk Architecture, CT Wilson Construction Company, and multiple subcontractors worked to provide design and materials that would meet LEED standards. Southern Energy Management performed energy modeling, and Systemworcx commissioned the building mechanical systems.
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