ect cited in the article was the Palazzo Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, which received $27 million dollars in economic-development incentives during a 10-year period for receiv- ing LEED-NC Silver certification. At its heart, LEED was designed to be a
voluntary program meant for projects to showcase their green attributes. It was not designed to be baked into building-code language or tied to legislation that would cause it to be mandatory. However, for a pe- riod of time economic-development incen- tives continued to be crafted encouraging energy-efficient and sustainable buildings, naming LEED as the bar to achieve. This was in part because LEED had developed market traction. For a government official who knows little about sustainable architecture and construction it’s easier to ask for a LEED certification than to determine a building’s green attributes without it. This is one rea- son USGBC backed ASHRAE 189.1 green code development. Before the decline of the economy, many states and municipalities used LEED as the stick to the carrot of economic-incentive dollars. My own state, Michigan—before its current legislators took office—offered a significant increase in available brownfield economic-development funds for achieving LEED certification as a part of the develop- ment. When our current governor was elected, the state was in economic trouble and almost every economic-development
incentive available (LEED-related or not) was done away with, and, not surprisingly, most of our new economic development also disappeared.
IN THE POST-ECONOMIC MELTDOWN, there is a tremendous amount of risk involved with real-estate development. Proj- ects are very costly and more often than not incentives are the tipping point between a go/no-go on a project. Economic develop- ment is what this country needs right now. We need to have developers taking the risk investing in buildings that create jobs for construction workers and demand for manufacturing products and goods. We
need to encourage real-estate developers to consider redeveloping older and function- ally obsolete buildings (a very sustainable notion) to preserve infrastructure and rebuild the core of our existing urban fabric. Economic-development incentives are the engines that make the cars go. For example, the success of Emagine,
a new movie theater and entertainment development project in the metro Detroit area, hung squarely on the economic- development incentives associated with achieving LEED certification. The property where the theater was being constructed contained a vacant building and had been underutilized for many years—not exactly
The Bazzani Associates Headquarters (above) became the first LEED-NC Certified project inside the city of Grand Rapids, Mich. Its renovation and that of the Wealthy Theatre (left) at the other end of the street helped spark transformation for the district, which once was a haven for drug and gang traffic.
Should economic-development incentives be tied to LEED certification?