This project involves the construction of a new 3- story office building and computer facility on a military base. The existing base master plan places the building in an area adjacent to an obsolete runway. Rather than incurring the cost of removing a substantial portion of the 24-inch thick, reinforced concrete paving; the design team has sited the building such that a portion of the runway can be used for the 800 parking stalls requested by the users. Since the project is in a campus-type setting, the project team understands that it can choose to include or exclude the runway from its site and hence all calculations. The design team would like to receive recognition for reusing a resource that would otherwise require the use of green space, be extremely expensive as well as labor intensive to remove or to replace with an equivalent parking area. CIR\'s and examples in the Reference Guide pertaining to MRc3.1 refer to materials reused in a building not in a project as a whole. We would like to broaden the definition of building material. We believe reusing the runway for parking satisfies the intent of this credit even if technically the pavement is not part of a building, but is part of the project. Since we are:
The runway cannot be applied to MR c3.1. The CIR ruling dated 05/16/03 was misquoted and actually states that a material salvaged on-site can be considered for this credit if it can no longer serve its original function and has been reprocessed AND INSTALLED for a different use. Because the runway is still serving its original function (that of pavement) and it is not being reprocessed and installed (striping is not considered reprocessing), then the reuse of the runway is not be applicable to MR c3.1. However, it could be applied to MRc2 Construction Waste Management. The intent of this credit is to divert material from the landfill. Based on the description of the runway construction; a significant amount of material is being saved from disposal. Depending on the project\'s overall waste management practices, you may be able to earn two points under MRc2, and possibly even achieve exemplary performance and an innovation point (if 95% of the project\'s total weight or volume is diverted). In addition to the points available via MRc2, an additional innovation point may be possible since the building was located to reuse an existing paved surface in lieu of building a new parking lot.