New Balance’s 250,000-square-foot headquarters in Brighton is the first building in the U.S. to achieve all possible credits in the USGBC’s indoor environmental quality category.
Well into the design stage for New Balance’s planned headquarters on Guest Street in Brighton, company officials realized something: They were within striking distance of racking up enough points for the new building to win a coveted LEED Platinum award from the U.S. Green Building Council.
New Balance, the giant footwear company, had already set its sights on winning a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, the second highest award the council can give after a platinum designation.
“From the very beginning, we were committed to building a high-quality structure,” recalls Jim Halliday, managing director of NB Development Group, the development arm of parent company New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc. “But then we saw how close we were in points to platinum and thought we’d regret if it we didn’t go for it.”
Putting the structure over the platinum-certification top wasn’t easy, and it took a lot of work – including installing a more sophisticated energy management system, improving the indoor air quality of the building and taking other design and construction steps, both inside and outside the headquarters – but in the end it worked.
Earlier this month, the striking 250,000-square-foot-headquarters, which New Balance moved into last fall, was indeed awarded platinum certification, one of only a handful of structures in Massachusetts to have one. It was the first building in the U.S. to achieve all possible credits in the indoor environmental quality category under the USGBC’s new rating system. There are only two other buildings in the world, in Italy and Thailand, that have achieved similar LEED status.
Though the jury is still out on whether high LEED marks are really worth the time, money and effort of tenants and owners of buildings, Halliday said New Balance is proud it shot for and got the highest ranking.
What appeared to push the NB structure over the platinum winning line was partly its ability to meet tougher indoor quality standards, Halliday said. Specifically, New Balance structure has a “low VOC” level, or volatile organic compounds, that can emit unhealthy fumes from paints, tiles and other materials.
The New Balance facility – designed by the Boston architecture firm Elkus Manfredi and built by lead contractor John Moriarty & Assoc. of Winchester – also has a highly sophisticated “passive energy management” system that carefully measures how much energy needs to be used at any given moment, rather than just turning a thermostat up or down to regulate temperatures. An advanced climate-control HVAC system also keeps fresh air circulating constantly throughout the building.
But Halliday emphasized that it wasn’t just indoor quality that won the platinum certification for the glass-covered, horizontally curving building – variously described as resembling an athletic shoe or a ship. Other features included 28 percent of all building materials coming from recycled sources, a sophisticated water retention system that reduces the amount of the site’s stormwater ultimately flowing into the Charles River, and walls and workspaces that came from environmentally friendly wood-processing and forest companies, he said.
One Platinum Enough For Now
New Balance executives declined to say how much extra money they had to spend to nab the platinum designation. In the past, some studies have estimated that a LEED Silver certification can boost building costs by 0 to 3.3 percent, LEED Gold by 0.3 percent to 5 percent, and LEED Platinum by a whopping 4.5 percent to 8.5 percent.
But David Manfredi, a principal at Elkus Manfredi, said that such cost estimates are now outdated and that the maturing of the green-building industry has driven prices down considerably in recent years. He also noted studies that have shown the long-term benefits of LEED buildings, especially in the reduction of energy consumption, offset higher costs.
“The LEED standards are technically getting harder and harder, but the costs have been coming down in many respects,” he said. “You can point to a lot of returns over the long-term.”
Manfredi did note that not every new building can achieve platinum status, even if a determined developer really wants one. The main problem: Most commercial structures are built on spec or for clients with very particular needs that prohibit the ability to win gold or platinum certifications.
“It’s just harder when you don’t know who the future tenants will be and what they’re going to need,” he said. “It’s a little easier when a company, like New Balance, is building for itself.”
That’s one of the reasons why New Balance isn’t expecting that other buildings at its Boston Landing site, where NB’s headquarters are located, will win platinum certifications. New Balance is currently building a new ice practice arena for the Boston Bruins and a 240,000-square-foot office building that NB has yet to fully lease out.
Boston Landing will also include a third 160,000-square-foot office building and a basketball practice complex for the Boston Celtics. Construction is expected to start later this year.
Tom O’Brien, managing director of HYM Investment Group, the owner and redeveloper of the massive Government Center Garage in downtown Boston, agrees it’s difficult to attain high LEED ratings if a developer isn’t sure who its tenants might be in the future.
“It’s always a financial balancing act,” he said of developers weighing how far to go with sustainability improvements versus what future tenants might want and need – and what they’re able to afford.
“It’s a challenge and a big problem,” he said.
