After a summer of tumultuous and severe weather events that wreaked havoc on the Caribbean and the Southern United States, a certain segment of real estate and property managers still doesn’t see the value of incorporating resilience into their buildings or their operations.
That’s one of the key findings in Structure Tone’s second-annual Client Sustainability Report. The construction management firm polled a select group of 140 senior corporate real estate and facilities management professionals to gauge where sustainability comes into play for end users across the commercial real estate community.
Based on their responses, it would appear that “green building” is now mainstream. None of the respondents consider it a fad. More than three-fifths—62%—see LEED certification as a market differentiator, up nine percentage points from last year’s survey. And more than half of those polled agree that employees expect the buildings they work in to be LEED-certified.
Indeed, 45% of those polled said they would pay more to lease space in a green building. And 42% expressed concern about where their buildings rank in public energy disclosers.
“Last year there was a concern that when LEEDv4, a more stringent version of LEED, was implemented, many owners would simply stop pursuing certification. But our results show that’s simply not the case,” says Jennifer Taranto, LEED AP ID+C/BD+C, WELL AP, Structure Tone’s director of Sustainability.
Sustainability is becoming mainstream, and LEED certification is still the gold standard in commercial real estate, according to Structure Tone's survey. Image: Structure Tone.
That being said, the No. 1 barrier to building green remains its cost for an overwhelming number of those polled. And there are still limits to how green the real estate and property management communities want to take their buildings. Only 11% of the survey respondents said their companies have policies that support progress toward Net-Zero Energy in the building sector. This is a slight downward movement from the previous year of 15%. “Surprisingly, 31% of respondents did not know if they have real estate in cities that have community-wide Net Zero goals,” Structure Tone reports.
Cost might also explain why the number of respondents who think resilience is important fell to 54%, from 61% last year. And 17% fewer respondents said they are seeking resilience expertise on their projects. (The survey was open to responses from March 1 through June 19, just months before Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria did their damage, and an 8.1-magnitude earthquake rocked Mexico City.)
Taranto tells BD+C that she was “surprised” by the lower responses about resilience. However, she also notes that the survey is in line with attitudes Structure Tone continues to encounter in the field from some clients that have yet to give resilience closer scrutiny.
Conversely, more real estate and property management professionals are embracing wellness as a standard for their buildings to pursue. More than 80% of those polled cited wellness as a relevant factor in recruiting and retaining employees. More than half of the respondents said they planned to seek expertise to devise wellness strategies for their buildings.
“Wellness is certainly coming to the forefront,” says Taranto.
Leading this charge is the International WELL Building Institute, which has developed wellness standards for buildings and communities. Water Street Tampa—a $3 billion mixed-use district under construction in Florida that BD+C reports on in a feature article about resilience in our October 2017 issue—on September 5 launched a pilot of the WELL Community Standard. This project, which when completed will have more than 9 million sf of commercial and residential space, is targeting to be the world’s first WELL-certified community.
One-quarter of respondents to Structure Tone’s survey said they were looking to do a WELL project within the next year.
In Structure Tone’s survey, 70% of the respondents work at companies with more than 1,000 employees. Two-thirds of those polled have square footage responsibilities that exceed 1 million sf. The top sector responses came from commercial office, data centers, healthcare, and pharma/life sciences.
Related Stories
| Sep 12, 2011
Putting a stamp on USPS's first green roof
The Morgan Building roof totals 150,000-sf. In addition to a vegetated green roof, other roof areas were upgraded and included 55,000-sf of reflective concrete pavers and ballast, which were also placed over a Sarnafil waterproofing membrane, and 40,000-sf of EnergySmart Roof—a reflective, energy-efficient vinyl roofing system from Sika Sarnafil.
| May 18, 2011
Carnegie Hall vaults into the 21st century with a $200 million renovation
Historic Carnegie Hall in New York City is in the midst of a major $200 million renovation that will bring the building up to contemporary standards, increase educational and backstage space, and target LEED Silver.
| May 16, 2011
Seattle unveils program to boost building efficiency
Seattle launched a new program that will help commercial property owners and managers assess and improve building energy efficiency. Under the program, all commercial and multifamily buildings larger than 10,000 sq. ft. will be measured for their energy performance using the EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.
| May 10, 2011
Are green goals out of reach for federal buildings?
Many federal agencies are struggling to convert their existing buildings to meet green standards, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Of 20 agencies graded by the OMB on their compliance with green mandates, only seven met the 2010 mandate that requires at least 5% of their buildings meet energy-efficient and sustainable standards.
| Apr 14, 2011
U.S. embassies on a mission to green the world's buildings
The U.S. is putting greater emphasis on greening its worldwide portfolio of embassies. The U.S. State Department-affiliated League of Green Embassies already has 70 U.S. embassies undergoing efforts to reduce their environmental impact, and the organization plans to increase that number to more than 100 by the end of the year.
| Feb 7, 2011
GSA Unveils New Sustainable Workplace Design Tool
The U.S. General Services Administration launched its Sustainable Facilities Tool on Monday, Feb. 7. The innovative online tool will make it easier for both government and private-sector property managers and developers to learn about and evaluate strategies to make workplaces more sustainable, helping to build and create jobs in America’s clean energy economy of the future.
| Feb 4, 2011
U.S. Green Building Council applauds President Obama’s Green Building Initiative
The U.S. Green Building Council applauded a key element of President Obama’s plan to “win the future” by making America’s commercial buildings more energy- and resource-efficient over the next decade. The President’s plan, entitled Better Buildings Initiative, catalyzes private-sector investment through a series of incentives to upgrade offices, stores, schools and universities, hospitals and other commercial and municipal buildings.
| Feb 4, 2011
President Obama: 20% improvement in energy efficiency will save $40 billion
President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative, announced February 3, 2011, aims to achieve a 20% improvement in energy efficiency in commercial buildings by 2020, improvements that will save American businesses $40 billion a year.
