We have a new office building that is on an Existing VA campus. There are no other LEED projects to date on the campus. As the government has mandated all future projects will be LEED we have been careful to make sure our boundary does not create unfair boundaries for future projects. We will be submitting this project as an individual project and not part of a campus. I do not see where it is mandatory to submit as a campus but if it is please let me know. We are not adding parking as parking already exists on the campus. We have defined our project boundary to include the areas that we are disturbing to create the building and those areas that support the operation of the building. We would like to provide parking for LEV and carpooling near the entrance but it's unclear how we should define the total number of parking spaces. In the MPR (page 18) it says, "If a LEED project building shares use of a parking lot, parking garage, or other amenity with another building, then those amenities must be allocated according to the percentage of use for each building." If I were to define the % of use by the building in a letter from the owner would this suffice? Or should this be determined by FTE? Even though we will not be modifying the parking or adding parking please confirm whether these spaces will need to be in the LEED boundary.
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Sonrisa Lucero
Owner / Energy Engineer / Sustainability ConsultantSustainnovations, LLC
138 thumbs up
June 19, 2012 - 12:58 am
You do not have to use the campus approach. However, on a campus, you will typically have some credits that you will want to use a credit approach for: stormwater design (SSc6.1, SSc6.1) and parking, among others. The LEV spaces do not have to be in the project LEED boundary. A letter from the owner will likely suffice, depending on how well founded the argument is in the letter. As long as you are using a reasonable method, allocating according to FTEs, peak occupancy (FTEs and transients), square footage or other fair method, you should be ok. Though, you may need to show a campus plan of the total number of spaces with the LEV spaces designated. These should be spaces closest to your building.
Nelina Loiselle
Above Green239 thumbs up
June 26, 2012 - 4:30 pm
I am wondering if you had success with this? I have a similar situation excpet that we ARE including a shared parking lot within the site boundry. Did you have success with your approach?
We plan to allocate a % of spaces our LEED project building. Would we then take 5% of our allocated spaces to determine the number of spaces we need to reserve for LE/FE? Or would LEED require we take 5% of all the spaces (even though the lot serves other building not being certifiied)?
Lisa Sawin
37 thumbs up
February 22, 2013 - 1:45 am
HI Sonrisa Lucero thank you for your comment. You mentioned that we do not have to use the campus approach but on a campus you will typically have some credits that you will want to use a credit approach for: stormwater design (SSc6.1, SSc6.2). Our current approach is to achieve these credits based on our LEED boundary. Could you please clarify whether you are saying that we MUST use a campus approach in order to achieve these credits?
Nena Elise, we have not submitted our project yet so I cannot comment on whether we have been successful or not.