A commercial office building with a footprint of 70,000 square feet has an overall site area of 200,000 square feet. The site is in an urban setting and the zoning requirement mandates a minimum of 20% of the net lot area must be public open space. The project design includes 15,000 square feet of pedestrian oriented hardscape and 18,000 square feet of vegetated open space. Does this project satisfy requirements for SS Credit 5.2 Site Development?
A. yes
B. no
C. not enough information
-The answer is choice A. I do not understand how this is obtained. I understand that 25% of the site area can be open space if it is an urban project, for Credit 5.2 – Maximize Open Space. I calculated 50,000 square feet of open space that is needed. However 15000+18000 does not amount to the amount of open space needed… can someone explain how to calculate this?
Ellen Mitchell
331 thumbs up
February 17, 2014 - 2:38 pm
Your calculations look correct to me. I even entered your numbers into the SSc5.2 Option 1 form just to make sure and it tells me that this is not compliant. Do your answers give you any more information beyond the correct choice being A? If not, it may be a mistake on their part.
Farah A.
9 thumbs up
February 17, 2014 - 3:34 pm
Ellen, thanks so much for taking the time to do that! The answers give no further information. I assume the answer is 'no.' Am I correct in calculating that 50,000 sq. ft of open space would be needed?
Thank you! :)
Ellen Mitchell
331 thumbs up
February 17, 2014 - 3:35 pm
That was my conclusion as well.
Farah A.
9 thumbs up
February 17, 2014 - 3:37 pm
In other words, the amount of hard scape and vegetated area would need to be 25% of open space, correct?
Cynthia Estrada
LEED AP BD&CSDS Architects, Inc.
48 thumbs up
July 10, 2014 - 11:36 am
Hello Farah and Ellen,
I ran across this post and couldn't resist the question. I think the issue is with the "net" sf, so I took the total site area and subtracted the building footprint (to get the net) which is 130,000 x 25% gives you 32,500. With the 18,000 sf vegetated open space and the pedestrian oriented hardscape of 15,000 sf equaling 33,000sf it works!