by Les Shaver

 

In May 2001, Liberty Property Trust announced that it was building a 58-story property on a site it had acquired a year earlier in downtown Philadelphia. The Malvern, Pa.-based REIT expected the more than $500 million project to be its first venture into sustainability. Right away, the project got a lot of attention. It’s easy to see why. In June 2008, the Comcast Center opened as one of the 15 largest buildings in the country and a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver project. The building, now owned by Liberty and CommerzLeasing und Immobilien AG, a wholly owned subsidiary of German-based Commerzbank AG, is 90 percent leased by Comcast. It’s also the tallest green building in the country.

 

Since the 1.25-million-square-foot office tower was announced seven years ago, Liberty has built 43 buildings that meet LEED standards and has become one of the leaders of sustainable building in office and industrial space. “Liberty has taken this [green building] on as an important feature in all of their developments,” says Dewitt Peart, president of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, a group that markets the benefits of doing business in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

 

But the Comcast Center started it all. The landmark project reduces energy consumption by 20 percent to 25 percent compared to its peers. First, there’s the amount of light that’s inside—its floor-to-ceiling height ranges from 11 feet to 13 feet. (Convetional ceiling height is between 8 feet and 9 feet.) On top of that, the building’s positioning helps decrease the toll those who work in it put on the environment. Its waterless urinals and fixtures use 40 percent less water than a typical office building, while a glass curtain simultaneously allows in 70 percent of the sun’s visible light and blocks 60 percent of its heat. It’s located on top of a metro stop and has only 87 parking spots. It also has a laundry list of other energy-saving advantages, such as greywater recycling, a passive cooling system, a system that controls indoor air quality, and a 120-foot tall shared entrance for the building and rail system with a dark stone floor with radiant cooling.

 

“Comcast is the building where we were introduced to LEED,” says John Gattuso, Liberty’s senior vice president and director of national and urban development. “We’ve done some other things since then that have pushed the envelope further.”

 

And by pushing the envelope, Liberty has moved to the forefront of the sustainable movement. Of its 73 million square feet of property throughout the country, the firm boasts more than 5 million square feet of LEED-registered green space completed or under construction nationwide and in the United Kingdom.

But getting there wasn’t easy. First, Liberty, spurred by Jim Lutz, senior vice president of development, had to prove the merits of sustainable building to founder Bill Rouse. He succeeded. By the time current CEO William P. Hankowsky took over, the company knew sustainable development was good business. After there was corporate buy-in, though, there had to be customer buy-in. And now, Liberty, a company with a long history of initiating change, plans to push harder into sustainability, making every new building LEED-certified and improving the energy efficiency of its existing stock. In fact, the firm was recently named the 2008 Developer of the Year by the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties for its commitment to sustainability.

 

“It’s the right thing to do,” Hankowsky says. “It has been a benefit to date, and we’re not stopping here.”