Interview with Marnie Abramson of The Tower Companies - Part II
Last week, I posted the first part of a two-part interview with Marnie Abramson, a Principal and .bmp)
the Director of Public Relations and Marketing at The Tower Companies, about their double Platinum LEED certified 200,000 square foot, multi-tenant commercial building located at 2000 Tower Oaks Boulevard in Rockville, Maryland and about Tower's experiences with green building in general. I've heard from several readers personally about how much they've enjoyed Part I of the interview - and so I'm happy to share with you the continuation of that interview in Part II here today.
Has Tower been able to estimate the utility savings for 2000 Tower Oaks Boulevard as compared to a non-certified 200,000 square foot office building?
LEED doesn’t really translate across the board into energy savings. Because of the way the LEED point system is designed, you as a builder can pick and choose the points that you want to pursue. If you’re not pursuing the Energy & Atmosphere points, then there’s not going to be that correlation between your project and energy savings. It’s hard to estimate utility savings between a certified and non-certified building for these reasons; however, you can look at your Energy Star score. At 2000 Tower Oaks, our Energy Star score is a 90. That means that we’re going to perform, under the most recent ASHRAE standard, about 28% more efficient than an average new construction Class A office building.
Do you think the benefits of designing your corporate headquarters on the ninth floor to meet Platinum certification under LEED for Commercial Interiors have merited the costs?
There were a few things that we did for our interior office space that were expensive, but I think that they do merit their costs. For example, we installed carbon dioxide sensors in our offices. These help us monitor air quality and that’s especially important in shared spaces like conference rooms. If you’ve ever been in a conference room for a long period of time, you may notice that you start to become tired or develop a headache. The reason is because there’s not enough oxygen in that room. When you come out of an all day conference in our offices, you do not leave tired. You can literally go back to your desk and start working. So, for us, there’s a huge productivity benefit that, hands down, pays for the initial cost over time.
Additionally, we maximized the amount of natural light that comes into our space so that we’re harvesting a free, natural resource and using less artificial lighting. LEED recommends that an office building not exceed 1 watt per square foot; in our space, we’re at 0.63 watts per square foot. We installed day-lighting sensors to read interior candle lumens that then automatically adjust the amount of artificial light needed to light the space. In addition to the energy savings that this provides, we’re also helping to increase employee productivity by providing views and access to natural daylight.
We always knew that we wanted to go for Platinum level certification for our corporate office space because sustainability is everything that we stand for. We were committed and ready to achieve that level of certification from the beginning, and we’re happy with the result.
What were some of the challenges or surprises that you faced in getting 2000 Tower Oaks Boulevard certified under either track (CS or CI)?
One interesting fact is that we ended up getting an Innovation Point for the installation of a system that protects the base building and everyone who works in it from electromagnetic frequencies (EMF). Here at Tower, we talk about EMF as the asbestos of the future, but this wasn’t something that the USGBC really understood at first because they hadn’t seen it before. We submitted a Credit Interpretation Request and supplied them with lots of information and studies demonstrating the potential negative consequences of EMF exposure, and the USGBC agreed with us in the end and we did get the Innovation point. I thought this was really interesting and important and I hope that the USGBC begins to integrate EMF concerns when they’re reexamining sustainability goals.
What’s next for The Tower Companies in terms of green building projects?
We are, without a doubt, focused on our existing building stock. We are looking at our entire building stock first for Energy Star purposes and then we’re going to go for LEED certification for Existing Buildings. There’s an interesting statistic floating out there that 90% of all buildings that will exist in the year 2020 have already been built. What that means is that we can’t build our way into a more sustainable future. We’re always going to have more existing buildings than new construction, so until we start looking at how we can improve our existing building stock, we’re not going to have a meaningful and measureable impact on the environment.
What I’m personally passionate about is trying to educate people and governments on the larger benefits of green building. The benefits go beyond fresh air and daylight and productivity. When you start to really think about the existing building stock on a national scale and how it can be improved, you begin to see all the economic opportunities that exist. The concept of a “green economy” becomes real when you think about how many jobs and opportunities this presents for plumbers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, renovating contractors and retrofitting contractors – the list just goes on and on. I think we’re faced with a great opportunity here and I hope that we can work with governments to create meaningful tax incentives and depreciation programs that can help spur job growth.
Thanks again to Marnie for her wonderful responses. I think it's clear that The Tower Companies is passionate about green building for all the best reasons - the benefits to the environment, to the people who inhabit or work in the green buildings, and to the building industry and economy in general.
