The concept of diverse uses appear in two places in the rating system: SSLp1 and NPDc3.
The intent of SSLp1, as Ted Bardacke confirms in a reply below, is clearly for the project to rely on existing conditions, and I presume that a retail and services survey of some type - say a GIS map indexed to photographs of the storefronts of existing businesses and institutions - will provide sufficient documentation of those conditions needed for completion of the template, assuming that prerequisite path is chosen.
My question is with respect to diverse uses under NPDc3, which the credit description clearly states is prospective and includes services planned for the site. In a well-designed mixed-use project, the number of services planned to become available will presumably be greater - and, in our case, significantly greater - than that which can be documented under the SLLp1 requirements. Schools, churches, playgrounds and such, and other institutions, will be easy to document in detail, as they are included in the design. However, for large suburban sites where the client is a land developer working with multiple sub-developers (a typical case), who in turn will work with multiple commercial leasing agents, it seems unlikely that leasing of retail (such as street-front retail) will be sufficiently progressed to be able to document the planned diverse uses definitively. For example, if the designed building product is a row of 80 ft depth storefronts on a street, I can provide a range of potential tenants. I can tell you how particular tenant types will be facilitated through design (setback sufficient for cafe space, etc). I can also tell you with some high degree of certainty what that mix will be based on market models and my client's leasing strategies. I might even be able to provide letters of intent from a few of them. But I cannot tell you, at Stage 2, and, most likely even at Stage 3, how absorption will occur and precisely which storefront will ultimately be occupied by F&B, a bank branch, a clothing boutique, or a convenience store.
Retail pre-leasing of this type is very rare, and, indeed, a client is presumably interested in getting the LEED certification (or pre-certification) in order to attract tenants, instead of the other way around. Moreover, retail of this nature generally tends to lease much more slowly than the absorption of housing and pre-leased office space and anchor retail, for example, and thus will likely remain empty for some time into the development's stable operations period.
I'm hoping to get some advice on this issue, how NPDc3 can be documented before the tenant mix is known, to reflect the design and planning (and, subsequently) the construction intention of achieving a mixed-use community, before the precise mix could possibly be known with certainty (by which time having the certification to help sell the product is irrelevant and unhelpful to the client, as the project will already have been fully absorbed). It seems to me that this credit has, within it, something of a catch 22.
Any insight would be appreciated.
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