I am working on an addition to a hospital pursuing certification under LEED for Healthcare. It is a bed tower addition to a hospital already certified under LEED NC v2.1. In order to meet parking code requirements for the addition and anticipated future parking needs the owner is constructing a parking garage on a site on the opposite side of the main hospital from the addition. Neither the existing nor future parking is designated to a specific portion of the hospital and is open to all staff and visitors. Although the garage will be constructed at the same time as the addition the building team constructing the garage will be different from the addition team. Permitting of the addition will cite the new garage to fulfill parking code requirements, however.
Should the LEED project boundary include this parking garage? If so, should the project boundary wrap around the existing hospital over to the garage, resulting in a significant increase to the project’s hardscape? Or can the project boundary be two non-contiguous parcels? Can the addition project exclude the garage completely and only cite the garage parking to fulfill SSc4.4 Parking Capacity?
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11477 thumbs up
May 27, 2011 - 1:09 pm
Cassidy, as a starting point for this discussion you should review the LEED Minimum Program Requirements supplemental guidance. Let us know what you think and what questions you have then.
Gail Vittori
Co-DirectorCtr for Max Potential Building Sys
56 thumbs up
May 27, 2011 - 3:04 pm
Thanks Tristan. Yes, I've looked through the guidance. It does address non-contiguous parcels but this project's garage is not "separated by land that is owner and operated by an entity different than the owner of the land that the LEED project building sits on." In this case it is more a question of if the garage must be included in the project boundary if it is built to support the overall hospital parking and is not specifically designated to the addition. If so, do we join the garage and addition with a thin walk path within our project boundary?
Susan Walter
HDRLEEDuser Expert
1296 thumbs up
July 11, 2011 - 3:34 pm
Cassidy,
We're faced with similar situations. For our project, we have two hospital tower additions, a new roadway and a parking garage. The first tower is under NCv2.2 and the second is under NC 2009. We did not include the parking garage in our LEED project boundary for several reasons. But we think the most telling reason is that the garage does not have to be constructed for the second tower to be built. That test included the roadway construction but kept the garage out of it. We also have a parking study that proves we don't technically need the additional space. If you were to include your garage, I would think you would have to include the garage project limits of construction plus the reasonable walking and driving paths to and from your tower project.