Should Buildable Land Area include Playing Fields for University Campuses?

April 4, 2019

Ransom Burgess

LEEDuser Premium Member

April 4, 2019

I am documenting surrounding density for a University Project, and am hoping to exclude playing fields from the buildable land area. I see references to LEED for Schools allowing this, but can't see it for university projects. All the fields I want to exclude are regularly used for sporting events.

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Kara Strong

Project Director
Sustainable Design Consulting

LEEDuser Expert

31 thumbs up

April 9, 2019 - 11:10 am

Hi Ransom,

Please review the previous discussion on this topic for more details. You'll see that playing fields can only be excluded with LEED for Schools projects. I checked v4.1 and didn't see any changes to this approach.

Kara

Ransom Burgess

LEEDuser Premium Member

April 12, 2019 - 2:35 pm

Thanks Kara,

Do you know how I should count areas like an outdoor track or outdoor tennis/basketball courts? Should they be excluded from the total buildable area?

Ransom

DuWayne Baird

Principal
EA Energy Solutions, LLC

LEEDuser Premium Member

15 thumbs up

April 19, 2020 - 2:50 pm

I would confer with a LEED coach about this topic. For more over a decade, we've been hearing how much intent is supposed to count for unique scenarios like this with GBCI. In my opinion, it would be extremely counter-intuitive to penalize here what they would otherwise encourage in other credits. If there were a "LEED for Higher Ed" I would imagine these functional outdoor spaces would be addressed the same way they are in LEED for Schools. Also, if you're not going to earn the credit otherwise, you have nothing to lose by asking the question.