The Failure of Liberty Center to Meet Expectations:
The Board Sponsored LEED Certification Workshop
Liberty Center was designed to meet the minimum LEED certification standard, called Silver. No problem, right? On the contrary, LEED has proven to be a really big problem. The decision to make Liberty Center a Green building was the board’s and the cost of doing so was borne by us using $1+ million in what were destined to be association funds, depending on who is doing the counting. To date, 10 months after the building was turned over for our use, the true and future costs of going LEED is unknown. Whether LEED will turn out to be a white elephant that few will want to own, and a costly boondoggle to boot, is yet to be determined. For information on what LEED certification is all about, Click here.
From what was brought up at the recently held board workshop on LEED certification, LEED has yet to meet association and homeowner expectations. While LEED was intended to address a number of energy saving features, one quickly gathered from the meeting that those features have not worked in favor of our homeowner’s lifestyle needs. Some of the unexpected consequences of the LEED design include complaints of improper temperature and humidity control in the building; an outdoor pool too cold to use in the a.m. hours; and the inability to maintain consistent and comfortable temperature and humidity levels in the indoor pool area. As related below, different LEED issues affect the overall site's design.
The workshop benefitted by the presence of three LEED advocates, who volunteered to assist the board in gaining a better understanding of what LEED is designed to accomplish. The value of the workshop was in the Q & A session, which attempted to address many of the concerns the board and others had about the LEED process and the energy related problems that were being encountered at Liberty Center.
It’s not as if there are no solutions to these amenity and energy-related issues. Certain piping, water and temperature control adjustments can be made to address many of the problems and the gas heaters can be fired up as needed, making just about everyone more comfortable and happy. However, there is one problem standing in the way. That problem is LEED Certification. In addressing homeowner comfort issues, certain energy saving features that LEED was designed to protect will have to be sacrificed in the process of meeting homeowner satisfaction. Turn this or that control mechanism in the “wrong” direction and the energy savings we paid dearly for gets discarded to the trash bin. The board appears to be in Catch 22 situation. The board will either meet homeowner comfort needs while scuttling LEED’s energy saving objectives or they will maintain LEED energy goals and leave the homeowners to suffer the consequences.
Initially at least, the board will most likely want to attempt to do both. How successful they will be depends on how much more money will be needed to address these issues and still meet LEED goals. Whether the installation of inexpensive devices or costly retrofitting will remediate all of the problems is unknown. In the coming years, money for capital projects will be increasingly tight.
The LEED panel made clear that LEED affects not only the building but also the entire site. Eliminate rocks here or add concrete there can impact the number of credits available under LEED. Lose too many credits and certification may be out the picture. Unknown was where the site stands as far as credits are concerned. Are we on the threshold of achieving Silver certification, or are we way above or below that threshold?
There were a number of amenity design issues at Liberty Center, some of which could have been corrected in the architectural phase of the project had there been sufficient interest. We are now faced with the need of correcting those deficiencies at our considerable expense in re-designating court use and adding lighting where none was provided, or in adding timers where none existed. Those were foreseeable and preventable issues. To those who would argue that we had no control over the process, I would offer the existence of the stadium designed tennis court as a last minute addition.
A more glaring design faux pas, of course, was the construction of the bocce courts. As everyone knows, except for Pulte’s architect and general contractor, a properly designed bocce court is played from both ends of the court, not from only one end. While one end of the Pulte-designed courts provided players with a shade structure and benches, the other end of the court provided players with a rocky terrain and cactus area to rest on. Was that unusual court design a LEED-based decision, did the architect simply run out of space to do it right, or was that a serious mistake? Mistake or not, ordinary play can proceed within the bounds of the court, while the players can stand at the back of the court or off to the side on the narrow alleyway between the courts as shown in the pictures. Is there enough room to correct the design faux pas? Possibly. You can decide for yourself by viewing the nature of this glaring problem by Clicking here.
The workshop suffered from a glaring omission, the 500-pound gorilla, otherwise known as the developer, Pulte. Two things became immediately apparent. Everyone agreed that Pulte continues to hold on to the LEED Certification prize, i.e., the answer to whether Liberty Center is or will be LEED Certified. Although there was no guarantee that Liberty Center would meet LEED Certification requirements, the building was designed with that goal in mind. What was evident, though, NO ONE FROM THE BOARD SEEMED TO KNOW WHERE WE ARE IN THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS. Perhaps that lack of knowledge is a bad omen, or not that unusual, since we were led to believe that the LEED process was in Pulte’s good hands. If that certification uncertainty were not bad enough, we learned that communications between the board and Pulte have apparently broken down. We are no longer talking to one another since with the leadership changes that have occurred since construction was approved apparently we no longer know who is in change. One positive outcome from the workshop was the impression that efforts will be made to learn from Pulte where Liberty Center stands insofar as LEED certification is concerned.
Once certification is achieved, another impression left was that the board would then be free to make whatever energy related changes they deemed necessary, regardless of the energy savings consequences.
Ron Johnson, 14 November 2010