We are looking to certify nineteen concession spaces in an existing airport. The spaces all share one mechanical system and one water source and do not appear to be sub-metered. There will be three separate design teams doing the design and the project will be constructed in four phases under one general contractor. Our questions: Is it possible to certify each individual tenant space or will that require sub-metering each space? Is it possible to achieve cerification for all the spaces as one project if the documentation is tracked accordingly over the total project duration?
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Scott Bowman
LEED FellowIntegrated Design + Energy Advisors, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
519 thumbs up
January 28, 2016 - 12:12 pm
Interesting question, and you probably need to get a conference call going on this one. I am assuming you are going for Retail CI? In my opinion, it would depend on ownership and leases. Is each of the 19 a different owner/tenant? Having sub-meters would seem to be important. I remember a food court that I designed many years ago, before LEED, and they had an issue that a gas service was brought in, and one tenant used it all, a Chinese vendor with a bunch of gas fired woks. So in that case, it would have been important to have a better idea how each vendor used their spaces in order to encourage efficiency. I'm just say'in...
David Eldridge
Energy Efficiency NinjaGrumman/Butkus Associates
68 thumbs up
February 27, 2016 - 4:11 pm
Let us know if these tenant spaces are targeted for v3 or v4, that might make some difference in approach. Also, if the operators of the spaces have any separate OPR so that design and construction may not be consistent across the spaces it will make things difficult to submit as combined design review.
To muddy the water a little bit, you may need to evaluate MPRs - The LEED project should be defined by a clear boundary such that the LEED project is physically distinct from other interior spaces within the building.
If v3, then also the "submit energy data MPR" there is an exception reported on LEED User that CI spaces would be exempt unless meters for the LEED space are available. Since the HVAC system is common (and perhaps with other non-LEED spaces) it sounds like energy data should not be supplied. (But I still recommend at least having electrical sub-metering, as do others in the thread, for the owners own use.)
The other obstacles would relate to tracking of materials and construction waste by the GC -- are these able to be tracked together or for individual suites, or across multiple phases? The next obstacle if the spaces are lumped together will be multiple designers submitting multiple designs for credit forms that are built to accept single submissions...not insurmountable, but will probably cause some extra effort in documentation and review.
From a transaction point of view, the reviewer will be under water if they get one certification fee to perform what may be 19 separate design reviews. (i.e. each build-out having its own complete set of design documents, but items like construction waste and site considerations being "easily" combined.)
So...several arguments either way, but I think it should be possible to take either approach. The GC will have to be involved in the decision. Combine the spaces and it will be difficult during design, but easier during construction. The reverse is true if the spaces are separated, the designs will have distinct reviews but the GC will have a burden to separate construction credits that they may not normally plan to track separately.
Lastly make sure the MPR is satisfied, which might require an interpretation request in advance.