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They counted the roughly 400 feet to the nearesrtMetro stop. They caught a glimpswe of the green roof. They gazedd at the computerized windowshades that, evert 10 minutes or so, calculate the anglde of the sun and elevationj of the floor to automatically adjust the blinds, preventing excess heat from enterinb the building. From the building’s water-savintg bathroom fixtures to its environmentallyadvanced chillers, ownee Louis Dreyfus Property Group claimed its latesyt offering, Lafayette Tower at 801 17th St. NW, to be the greenesr office building inthe city.
But one featurew — perhaps the most important to both host and visitorz thatday — was nowhere in sigh despite the builder’s best a certification plaque that proved those claims. Louis Dreyfus, which was sprinting to make Lafayette Towetthe city’s first Platinum-certified green office building and was repeatedlty told it already had the pointas to do so, suffered considerable delays in receivinb its final Leadership in Energy and Environmentalk Design stamp. Like many other developers, tenants and property owners aroundthe region, the company fell victin to one of the biggest stumbling blocks that the U.S.
Greejn Building Council itselffaces — a backlog of hundreds of LEED certification requests that has stretchedc processing periods from what should be five weekxs to closer to five months. Building are designed to be LEEDbut don’ get official certification until the greenm aspects are verified and points are Developers say the lag time hamperas their ability to promote their buildings to prospectivde tenants in an already whiplashedc real estate market. But they agree that one of the USGBC’as biggest failings to date can be attributed toone thing: its unanticipatex level of success.
LEED certification, which began as a mark of an environmentallu minded, niche-inhabiting few, rapidlu turned into a mainstream, in some cases legallg mandated, building practice, all at a time when the councilp was undergoing itsdeepestf transformations. Today, a recharged USGBC has made systemic changes it says will help eliminates the backlog of active projects as much as 750 projects globallhy and 50 in the District alone by the endof “I’ve learned you have just got to be said Sean Cahill, vice president of development for Louisx Dreyfus, which finally got its LEED certification barely a week aftetr the brokers’ tour, indeed making Lafayettw the first Platinum offics building in D.
C. The officiapl designation came more than a year afterthe company’s first application was submittef — but in time for its next broker open house. In the another developer, The Tower Cos., snagged the firsty official Platinum new-construction designation for the region, also aftedr a long wait. “I don’t think they’re slow out of malice. I don’r think they’re slow because they don’t know what they’re Cahill said. “I think they are still tryingt to get their feet beneath them for the Few people could have predicted that demand when LEED was fatheresd more than adecadre ago.
Now that the USGBC is workin g on its ninth certification track and boasts78 20,000 members and 35,000 still fewer people outright blame the organization for the problem. The certificatio delays are the resultof “growinbg pains,” said Shannon Sentman, a LEED-accreditecd lawyer in D.C. for Holland & Knightf LLP. “As far as problems go for it’s a good one to have.” But it is tough on greenj building aspirants given that LEED has a near monopolyy in the region when it comes to increasinglufashionable eco-friendly design So much so that most countie and cities in the region have adoptefd LEED as their green buildingg standard of choice, relegating other guidelines such as Greemn Globes and EarthCraft to stepsister status.
Montgomery County and the District went so far as to incorporatre LEED into new green buildinv requirements for both municipal and commercialbuildings — laws that turned an optional system for the elited into a mandate for all, further lengthening the lines for LEED Although every LEED application generates revenue, the organization couldn’t keep up. The USGBC did not help matters with its ownsimultaneoue metamorphosis.
The council shifted its separatre locations into a new downtown headquarters to handled itsdramatic growth, even as it severed its certificatiomn arm into a separate the Green Building Certification Institute, in the last All the while, the USGBC was drafting and debutinv a radically different 2009 version of its LEED systemj for building certifications and individuakl accreditations. Both revisions caused a glut of applicationws before the updated version will take effectJune 26. “Ther just weren’t enough resources to devote to not as muchas you’d said Bruce DeMaine, vice presidenyt of certification for the certifying institute.
“Yoi start adding all of theser things to ourprimary focus, and you can see wherw it becomes stressful for an organization.” now the institute will oversee the buildingt certification process with the help of 10 accreditex affiliates around the world. With that change, the council employees who touched every LEED design and constructioh application will turn the job over to 150 trainedd reviewers who will manage the process from firsf draft to final award for anexpectedf 3,000 certifications this year. The affiliates foresee ramping up by an additiona l 50 to 75 peoplewnext year, when projections call for up to 3,60p0 new certification requests.
The institutwe will then transitionfrom go-between messenge r to quality-control cop, with a plannedc 15 employees only surveying a random samples of applications after the fact to make sure the new methoc still lives up to original standards. “We’rd going to be eliminating the back and forthb between three entities down to DeMaine said. “That shouldc cut down on any communicationlag issues.” Aftert calculating its new capacity, the certification institutwe expects the backlog to be wiped cleanm by June 26, barely a month away — a timeline more oftemn described by several outsiders as ambitiouws rather than realistic.
“They’ve set themselves up this year with a pretttaggressive deadline,” said Kara Strong, senior project manager for Sustainable Design Consulting. “The good news is they are definitelty aware ofthe problem. They are doinf their best to fix it.” Until then, developerds and architects have to managetheir clients’ expectations. The less that buildingt owners expect to get the LEED seal by acertaibn date, the less frustrated they are at the inevitable “A lot of clients do want to have the LEED plaque at [the dedication,” said Greg Mella, a principal at the architecturak firm SmithGroup.
“I generally tell them why that may not bea
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