FAR of a retail unit within a Multi-Use Building

Tim Nabholz

Associate - Sustainability

Integral Group

LEEDuser Basic Member

9 thumbs up

Project location :

Canada

September 28, 2020

Is there another way to count the FAR of retail in multi-storey building with residential above?

We have a project where 95% of the neighbourhood (In Canada, sorry for the "u") is residential. However, we do have a ground floor retail component (10,000 sqft) inside a five-storey residential building. When we calculate the FAR of the retail component it is 0.7 as it is roughly 70% of the plot. However, this doesn't consider the fact that there is a residential component on top of it. When we do our final calculation of compactness, this drops us from 4 points to 3.99 points, which drops us to 3 points. I don't think that is the intent of the credit.

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Eliot Allen

LEED AP-ND, Principal

Criterion Planners

LEEDuser Expert

231 thumbs up

Mon, 09/28/2020 - 23:27

Tim, while floor area in the FAR equation is a given based on building design, the amount of nonresidential buildable land in the denominator of the equation can be set at the discretion of the project team. Projects are advised in the Reference Guide to prorate mixed use land area shares to match mixed use floor area shares, but it's not an absolute requirement as long as any deviation from floor area shares isn't extreme. Sometimes minor adjustment of buildable land allocations between residential and nonresidential can help solve the problem I think you're describing. Eliot