Start working on this credit in the early stages of planning. It can take a long time to work out the details of agreements between the school board (or other decision-making body) and community organizations. Also, space may need to be added to accommodate joint-use facilities, so plan for this early. If you wait until the design is finalized, you may have to redesign parts of the building.
If your school did not plan on providing joint-use facilities, meeting the requirements could mean building an additional room or paying a fee to use nearby facilities. However, most teams find it easy to meet the requirements through the use of planned spaces and existing agreements. This will help keep costs low.
Check to see if the school already has a joint-use agreement with local organizations such as scouting groups, civic or church groups, neighborhood associations, family services, and various community groups. Even if current arrangements don’t meet LEED requirements, they may already be halfway there; existing arrangements may simply need to be formalized.
If the Phase II ESA reports that the site is contaminated, then you must remediate the contamination. Remediation efforts must meet local, state or federal standards (whichever is most stringent) for residential, unrestricted use. (For more details on remediation efforts, see SSc3: Brownfield Redevelopment.)
