‘Green’ building trend growing in Calgary
City home to 125 LEED certified buildings
The trend toward ‘green’ development picked up steam in Calgary last year as 48 projects — twice as many as 2012 — gained LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification through the Canada Green Building Council.
Calgary now has 125 LEED certified buildings, said Mark Hutchinson, the council’s director of green building. Another 175 projects — still in some phase of design or construction — have registered for certification.
The first LEED-certified building in Calgary was the Crowfoot Public Library in February 2005.
More than 1,750 projects across Canada have received LEED certification, a process that rates a project’s design, construction and operation on numerous energy and environmental standards.
“We’ve got water treatment plants, schools, arenas, office buildings, all kinds of projects,” Hutchinson said.
“Last year, we saw a growth, in particular, in the retail sector. With Target coming to Canada they adopted a policy of certifying all their stores they were building to LEED. Other 2013 certified retail developments included Bow Valley Square and buildings at Deer Valley Market Place.
Hutchinson said the LEED certi- fication program continues to grow as developers recognize the benefits of building green — from being more environmentally friendly to attracting tenants.
The council said the Canadian green building market is poised to see growth over the next three years with surveyed Canadian firms expecting to grow their green practices from one-third in 2014 to one half by 2017.
The greening trend is also growing beyond only LEED certification.
“The way we look at it there’s kind of two things that help us form our decisions. One is we try and reuse and adapt existing buildings so you see that in some of the investments that we’re making in all of our markets but in Calgary in particular,” said Michael Hungerford, part- ner with Hungerford Properties, citing the Icon Business Park and the Nexus Business Centre which have undergone multi-million dollar refurbishments in the city.
“Reuse and adapting existing buildings I think is the greenest decision of all because there’s so much energy that goes into building these buildings to begin with. To throw that all away and discard it into the landfill is a real waste of energy.
“The second thing is what I would call a green mindset. As a developer, as we make decisions having a green mindset, and putting your green hat on if you will, you go about planning and designing and building projects.”