USGBC concerned about developers using LEED registration in marketing

LEED administrators are concerned about a small group of developers or project owners who tout their projects as “LEED pre-certified” and then fail to follow through with certification.

A report by The New England Center for Investigative Reporting cites a bronze wall plaque in the lobby of a 500,000 sf Massachusetts office building featuring a USGBC logo. The building has hallway posters highlighting the building’s green features with the logo “LEED Gold pre-certified.”

The office complex is not certified by USGBC. The developer decided not to go through the certification process just to obtain “a piece of paper.” The developer says that the building was built as “green” as if it were certified.

The report says that limited USGBC oversight allows developers to misappropriate the LEED brand. Some use misleading advertising that can deceive renters or buyers by exaggerating a project’s LEED certification status or by obscuring the lack of one, the report says.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.