The project is a major renovation of primarily the common areas in a 37-year old, one and two story, multi-tenant retail mall. The mall was originally designed, permitted and built as an open air mall where the tenants were grouped into multiple buildings with common areas open to the sky between them. During the 1980s, these common areas were enclosed using separate structural and mechanical systems. The total building area inside the LEED boundary is 500,575 sf. The common areas encompass 145, 282 sf. The tenant areas are aggregated in sectors from 20,000 sf to 50,000 sf and separated by one and two hour fire rated exit corridors (the common area of the mall). Both the common and tenant areas of the mall are independently conditioned with multiple small, air-cooled, roof-top systems ranging from 1 to 20 years of age. One of the main goals of the project is to decrease the building\'s energy and carbon footprint by incorporating an extensive HVAC upgrade package to the common areas and requiring all new leases to incorporate sustainable guidelines including HVAC equipment that exceeds ASHRAE 90.1. Question: Will it satisfy the requirements of CS EA Prerequisite 2 and EA Credit 1 to classify the tenant spaces and common areas of an existing multi-tenant retail mall as separate adjacent buildings similar to the requirements found in the LEED for Multiple Buildings under NC v2.2 for the purposes of determining the baseline HVAC system type(s) as defined in ASHRAE 90.1 Table G3.1A? Proposed Interpretation: The design team proposes to classify each tenant sector and the common area as separate campus buildings at the location of the fire rated partitions for the purposes of establishing the baseline HVAC system type. This would allow the baseline HVAC system types for the tenant areas (75,000 sf &
The applicant is requesting clarification regarding the term "building" as it applies to energy efficiency modeling for a multi-tenant retail mall that was previously converted from an outdoor mall to an indoor mall with indoor common areas. From the description provided above, it appears that the retail mall should be classified as a single building: the common areas are directly connected to all of the retail spaces and/or the retail spaces are connected to one another; significant transfer of air is likely between the retail spaces and the common area spaces; and the use of the building (as a retail mall) is consistent throughout the whole project. There was no strong justification provided by the applicant to justify why the retail spaces should be considered as separate buildings. Therefore, the project should be considered a single building. Applicable Internationally.