The new Leeder Place Emergency Family Shelter was completed recently in East Gwillimbury for the non-for-profit agency Blue Door Shelters. Designed and built according to LEED environmental standards, the new facility demonstrates lasting ʻgreenʼ benefits, but will also yield significant economic and social advantages.
The 12,000 sq.ft., $2.9M project located north of Toronto finished construction on-time, on- budget, and achieved of 37 LEED credits corresponding to a Silver level of certification.
Sustainable buildings are typically assumed to incur additional costs and thought to be only for high-end projects with generous budgets. Leeder Place proves this maxim wrong. Strategies that decreased operational costs without impacting the project budget were key design and construction goals for the emergency shelter project.
“We were really excited to help this project decrease ongoing utility and maintenance costs as these savings will go directly to supporting families in crisis,” said Justin Downey, a Director at CDML (formerly ECO3) which provided sustainability consulting on the project. “It was important that these savings didnʼt simply result from additional capital expenditures. As such, our mandate was to add ʻgreenʼ value to the project while having a zero impact on budget and schedule.”
The impressive list of green achievements includes: LEED Silver Certification, a 40% reduction in annual energy cost, a 49% reduction in domestic water use, a 100% reduction in irrigation water use, and an 89% reduction in construction waste sent to landfill.
“The best strategies to achieve green objectives are often the simplest,” added Downey. “For example, to eliminate the use of municipal water for irrigation, we selected only native species of vegetation that require only water provided by rainfall, which weʼve had a lot of this summer." laughed Justin "This strategy not only reduces the environmental impacts associated with municipal water consumption, it eliminates the need for an irrigation system, and has a positive impact on the project budget.”
“Building green did require a slight shift in thinking for us; however, it didnʼt require a shift in budget,” said Matt Gilman of Monteith Building Group Ltd., the projectʼs design-build lead. “For instance, sorting construction waste onsite for recycling actually reduced our disposal costs. Overall, going green saved the project money.”
