What Price Gold!

BBH Design and UPUCC Share the Gold

Max is affiliated with a church that a couple of years back joined forces with an architectural company. The church and the firm were both too small to get a building of their own and too large not to.

They put their resources together and bought an aging office building that was in crying need of renovation. Having a church to go to when you need prayers doesn't hurt.

At the time UPUCC (Umstead Park United Church of Christ) was known as North Raleigh United Church of Christ. The church was in a multi-year search for a more permanent home than the basketball court at a YMCA. The church was in desperate desire to expand the children's programs and have some adult fellowship space.

BBH Design was making inroads into green technologies and was literally running out of space. It wanted to do more but it wanted to preserve resources at the same time. They were finding it difficult to locate a building of the right size that met all the criteria they needed.

Somewhere in their searches, the two organizations came into contact. At least one of them had looked at the "Brownleigh" building but it was way too big. It is also possible that they had both seen it.

In looking at their common problem, buildings either all too big or too small, they realized that some of the too big ones might be just right for both together. They of course settled on the "Brownleigh" building, which has proven to be just right.

The story of LEED started from the very beginning of the journey. LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) developed the LEED certification program to provide standards for environmentally sustainable construction. Both the church and the architectural design firm have a decided leaning towards doing environmentally good things.

This was a partnership where both parties have been willing partners in making environmentally conscious decisions in deciding how to renovate the building.

The very first decision was to go through the building and discover everything that could be reused and by whom it could be reused. Groups that had a place for things in the building were given those things.

Items being taken out of the building that could be sent back to manufacturers or to a recycling facility were identified and placed in separate locations as they were removed.

Everything that could be recycled or reused was; very little made it to the landfill.

Once every thing was out of the building the process began moving in the other direction.

Everything was chosen based on function and environmentally friendliness. The kitchen for BBH Design was recycled from another project. One of the interior windows is actually a recycled garage door that just perfectly meets the need.

The floors are covered with recycled carpets that are to be returned when they get worn out so they can be recycled again. The bathrooms are low flow toilets. The lights come on slowly but in the end provide better lighting at a lower use of electricity. The water for keeping the exterior plants in decent shape comes from a well on the grounds. The landscaping itself is of native plants that are hardy and need little care.

There is certainly a lot more if you asked the architects. The cost of doing this environmentally friendly building would have doomed this building for either of the two organizations. As a joint effort, the process has worked surprisingly well.

The building cost with full renovation was less than a comparable new building would have cost either organization built from ground up. Some of the environmental items were not included because there were steep costs associated with them, and because the older design of the structure just didn't lend itself to that much change.

In this case the cost was in trusting that two distinctly different organizations could work together over a period of years to make a mutually beneficial situation work.

The payoff came earlier this month when temporary certificates were hung on the building.

They said only one simple thing: LEED GOLD.

The formal announcement has not been made but the process worked better than anyone could have imaged. Now sustaining the building and adding additional environmentally friendly things to it and the grounds will be the goal.

Max writes about greenways, rare diseases, timely topics, places to eat, travel and other issues of interest. Max encourages you to add your comments.

Link one is to a BBH Design article on winning Raleigh's Pinnacle Award.

Link two is to bbh-design group.

Link three is to LEED for existing buildings.