Historic Front Street, New York, NY. Architect: Cook + Fox.
Photo: dbox for Cook+Fox Architects LLP
From the planning stage through occupancy, green buildings offer many opportunities to build recognition for your business. In this section you'll find pointers on how to get the press and the public interested in your green achievement. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, for example, has a strong record of boosting media coverage for green building projects. As the word gets out, you'll strengthen your reputation as a good corporate citizen and have an easier time attracting and retaining a broad range of employees or tenants. And building green can play an important role in helping you develop or enhance your brand.
At the same time, taking careful note of lessons learned on each of your green projects will help you standardize your building practices and bring down costs for subsequent green building efforts.
CASE STUDY
Vancouver Island Technology Park (Vancouver, BC)
Despite a collapse in local demand for technology space in 2001, newspaper, trade magazine and television coverage of this project's LEED gold certification helped generate a 25 percent lease-up within six months and a 50 percent lease-up within one year of its completion. "LEED truly has distinguished us in the market place and provided us with free advertising locally and nationally that the project could not have afforded," says Joe Van Belleghem, development consultant for the project and president of JVB Consulting, Inc. Full case study (pdf) »
