Our project is an Addition that will sit North of an existing school. Our LEED project scope does not include the existing building nor the existing parking lot to the south. However, we are required to add catch basins in the parking lot in accordance with the local Stormwater Ordinance as a means for picking up runoff from the parking lot and to prevent runoff from the property from spilling out directly onto the public right-of-way. Following the work needed for the catch basins, we would like to re-stripe and re-coat the parking lot to clearly mark parking stalls including the required ADA parking stalls. It is hard to see any parking stall as it is. We do not intent to add any new parking.
I have two questions?
1. Since this improvement is required by the local ordinance, must we include the parking lot in the LEED boundary?
2. We are including new landscape islands on the southernmost edge of the parking lot and will include this in the LEED boundary. Is it still ok to exclude the rest of the parking lot.
Thank you!
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David Posada
Integrated Design & LEED SpecialistSERA Architects
LEEDuser Expert
1980 thumbs up
June 19, 2017 - 1:23 pm
It's not a clear cut situation - you could make a good case for either including or excluding the parking lot - but you'll probably need to include all the related site area or none at all.
If you are including the landscape islands to the south of the parking lot, which sounds like it's separated from the new addition by the existing building and the existing parking lot, it makes sense you'd need to include the new catch basins and the parking lot area in your LEED boundary, stormwater calcs, light pollution, and open space, heat island credits. It doesn't make sense to include just the landscaped islands - that would probably be seen as "gerrymandering" the LEED boundary to include only an area that helps you.
Alternatively, the re-striping and re-painting of the parking lot, which adds no new parking lot area, could be considered routine maintenance and wouldn't necessarily be part of the LEED boundary since it's not being built to serve the new addition. It sounds like the catch basins and landscaping are also physically separate from the addition and could be considered a separate project, especially if it has a separate budget and contract.
Have you gone through the credit requirements and scorecard for both scenarios to see if there are any deal-breaking issues in one scenario or another?