Can an Off-site parking garage be used to achieve credit?

I have the same question. Can off-site garage parking with compliant SRI roof meet the requirements of the credit?

Check the guidance under MPR3. The way I read it, you couldn't do this. Basically, this could be seen as cherry-picking an environmental benefit from a neighboring building for the benefit of earning a LEED credit. Another building could theoretically claim the same building's roof for its LEED credit.Can you include the parking in the boundary?

I would agree with Tristan on this. It does not seem likely you can include a neighboring building to meet the credit unless this is included in the project boundary and accounted for in all other credits.

The LEED project is located on a campus, and the garage is existing and serves the whole campus . . .

E H, I don't think those facts change my advice: put it in the LEED boundary if you want to take credit for it.

For credits related to parking capacity, the amount of off-site parking should be included as part of the evaluation the Parking Capacity credit. But, for all other credits the parking features should not be included. Including the off-site parking helps prove you are not trying to hide parking by carefully excluding it from the official LEED boundary. This is the right way to do it, in my opinion, but the LEED reviewers follow review rules that allow excess parking to be hidden.

For a recent certified project we included the off-site parking in the calculations we received the following review comment.

"While projects are not required to include the area of the entire campus boundary owned by an entity for the calculations in this credit, it is noted for future submitals that when designating a LEED campus boundary for the purposes of documenting credits on a campus wide basis, that boundary must be consistent throughout the submittal. The LEED campus boundary delineated within credits such as SSc4.3 Alternative Transportation Low Emitting and Fuel Efficient Vehicles and SSc4.4 Alternative Transportation Parking Capacity is not consistent with the boundary used for the calculations in credit. Since compliance can be verified for all three buildings pursuing LEED Certification on-site, credit compliance is not affected at this time."

For the project, only SSc4.4 included anything outside the LEED campus boundary. SSc4.3 was entirely within the LEED campus boundary.

What the review comment is stating is that is expected that all off-site, and outside the LEED campus boundary, including employee designated parking, will be excluded from the LEED documentation. This is not the correct answer, in my opinion, but it is a LEED review rule that creates a loophole by allowing parking capacity which might exceed the LEED requirements to be excluded, and allowing the credit to be earned.

I would also suggest taking a look at the AGMBC to see if you would like to use a Campus approach to your documentation.

Yes, I will definitely look into Campus Approach. It would make sense for a number of credits. And, extending the boundary of the individual building will definitely look like "gerrymandering." Thanks for all the feedback!