Our project consists of a warehouse/office building. It is co-located on a site with a new project for another state agency. The site development is shared between the two agencies; however, only our project is attempting LEED Certification. The two agencies have agreed to a division of the property and site development costs, with our project occupying the smaller proportion.Our intent is to designate an area of the site equal to the agreed upon proportion, including the area around the project building, with its associated parking, access roads and retention ponds, for LEED credit purposes. Since the access roads and retention ponds are actually shared facilities (similar to a campus), we drew the boundary to include our portion of the access roads adjacent to the building and of the retention pond areas. The parking included within this boundary is provided to serve our project. The other agency has a requirement for a large number of vehicle parking spaces. Some of this parking has been located adjacent to the parking spaces serving our project, and we have drawn the boundary to exclude these spaces.We will base all documentation efforts consistently on the portion of the site included within the designated boundary. Please let us know if this approach will be acceptable.
Given the circumstances described, the proposed approach appears reasonable. As stated in Administrative CIR, dated 7/6/2004, numerous CIRs address this issue and require that project teams utilize consistent site definition across all LEED credits; in particular, Administrative CIR Ruling, dated 6/4/2003, states: "The project definition or scope for LEED must be clearly defined and remain consistent across all LEED credits. You cannot address certain aspects of the project for some credits and other aspects of the project for other credits." This applies to all credits, not just those in the Sustainable Sites category. You may find it helpful to review other germane CIR Rulings, such as: SSc5.1, dated 2/20/2003 and 9/02/2003; SSc5.2, dated 1/18/2002; SSc7.1, dated 8/2/2001; Admin., dated 10/4/2001. Also, the LEED-NC v2.1 Reference Guide requires on page 21 that "the project area must be defined consistently throughout LEED documentation." Applicable internationally.