I am confused about the shower requirement in a residential building that has retail space on the ground floor. The guidance about Mixed Use refers to combining Case 1 - Commercial/Institutional and Case 2 - Residential. Yet Retail, when you are talking about a Retail project, is clearly different than Commercial in that it doesn't require a shower but rather a bike maintenance facility. The Further Explanation example clearly combines Commercial Office space with Retail space FTEs and considers both with respect to bike spaces and showers. So why is retail alone considered Retail which does not require a shower, while retail with Residential is considered Commercial and does?
Often developers have unbuilt out retail space in their residential buildings and don't want to provide a shower in their core facilities. If you try to put a shower in a future tenant lease agreement, you either have to put a shower in every retail space's lease which just doesn't make good sense or you end up burdening one lease and then having to figure out how to provide access for all the other retail space FTEs.
This doesn't make sense to me. Retail workers I would argue are far more likely to be part time than office workers and far less likely to have locker room facilities with storage for clothing and stuff inherent in the idea of showering. We used to have LI10209 allowing us to exempt these spaces if they were less than 10% of the gross SF and no larger than 5,000SF. This LI doesn't apply to v4 but even so, a large building can easily have small retail spaces that in aggregate are greater than 5,000SF. So a huge retail establishment under the Retail rating system would not be required to have any showers but a few discrete retail spaces that in aggregate are say 15,000SF in a residential building would. Can anyone clarify why this would be the case?
Matthew Dempsey
Sustainability ConsultantThornton Tomasetti
LEEDuser Expert
3 thumbs up
February 15, 2021 - 4:24 pm
Hi Michelle! To achieve points for LTc6 under v4, occupants of retail spaces do require showers, and this is the same whether it's standalone retail or combined with residential. The credit intent is focused on promoting clean transportation and improving public health regardless of the type of work performed at the building (when considering retail vs office). It may be helpful to note that the showers for retail are based on total regular occupants, so a single shower may serve more than one retail tenant space.
Michelle Rosenberger
PartnerArchEcology
522 thumbs up
February 18, 2021 - 5:51 pm
Hi Matthew,
Right you are. I missed it. Thanks for the correction.
Danielle Waters
Project ConsultantSustainable Design Consulting, LLC
4 thumbs up
January 4, 2024 - 2:16 pm
Also, be sure to consider Predominate Use on Pg 103 of v4 Reference guide: "Projects with commercial-institutional space or residential space totaling less than 10% of the total building floor area may follow the requirements of the predominant use, at the discretion of the project team." If your project is predominately or >90% Residential, you do not have to follow the Commercial requirements for showers in the retail space.