This is the future Lake Smetana Business Center – Building B as seen from the 10400 Building at 10400 Viking Drive. Doesn’t it look so real? And yet it’s only an architect’s rendering of what the finished building will look like, perhaps during the late summer of 2007.
The building is under construction right now. If you drive I-494, you can look across Lake Smetana and see it today. What’s unique about this building, however, can’t be seen at 70 mph from 494. The Lake Smetana Business Center – Building B is going to be a LEED-certified building.
LEED is an acronym. It stands for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design. It is a system for rating the environmental impact (both initially and on an on-going basis) of buildings. It was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. According to their website, the USGBC created the LEED program to assist design professionals; to define what it meant to do “green” design; to recognize leaders in sustainable building operations; to establish a recognizable “brand” for environmental design; to stimulate competition for green products and practices; and to promote whole-building integrated design processes.
So what does it mean to be a LEED-certified building? The certification process is complex. A building owner must complete a series of forms and submit them, essentially, to be judged. The LEED people judge the elements of the building’s design and operations by awarding it points. If the building’s points achieve a certain threshold level, the building owner can claim to have a LEED-certified building.
How do you get LEED points? You get points for having automatic energy management systems in the building that will reduce energy consumption. You can get points for having CO2 sensors to increase the continuous fresh air exchange. For having showers and locker rooms to encourage people to walk or bike to work. For minimizing the amount of construction waste at the site. For dedicating space in the building for recycling. And so on and so forth.
The Lake Smetana project is being developed by Liberty Property Trust. Liberty is a national Real Estate Invest Trust (REIT). They have offices throughout the United States and in the United Kingdom. Their Minnesota office is here in Eden Prairie. They are the largest single owner of real estate in Eden Prairie – and the city’s largest single taxpayer. They are professional real estate investors who invest for the long term. They tell us that Eden Prairie is a good place to own real estate and they like being in our city.
They are building this LEED-certified building because it fits with a national strategy to invest in environmentally-sustainable real estate. They believe it’s a good investment. They also want to do what’s best for the environment. But they also tell me that they believe this building will be worth more in the future because it is being built to be a LEED-certification than if it were not. I think that’s a good sign for the future.
Liberty’s local leader is David Jellison. David got some of his staff together a couple of weeks ago to meet with a group of city officials that included the Mayor, two members of our Conservation Commission, our Environmental Coordinator and me. They gave us a full presentation about the building, what’s special about it, and talked about why they decided to build it here in Eden Prairie. Liberty is a good corporate citizen. We are fortunate to have them in the community. They are leading the way toward building a more environmentally-sustainable economy in Eden Prairie.
