Rating System

LEED BD+C: New Construction

Rating System Version

v3 - LEED 2009

Inquiry

Two of our projects are supermarkets registered under the LEED NCv2.2 rating system. Because of the uniqueness of the grocery retail building type, we utilized strategies from the LEED for Retail Pilot program to help make sense of some of the LEED-NC credits in the retail environment. Case in point, our energy modeler had to utilize the LEED for Retail application guide to model the heavy refrigeration loads of the building because the LEED-NC Reference Guide & ASHRAE 90.1-2004 Appendix G make no accommodation for it. Similarly, the Sustainable Sites 4 group of credits is in many ways does not fit well with the drastically different occupancy of retail from a typical office building. In the specific case of Bicycle Commuting, it is simply not appropriate to provide showers to retail customers and these can cause personnel problems when provided to retail employees. Furthermore, providing carpooling spaces to retail customers does not achieve the intended benefit, as the meaning of carpooling is called into question. The AGR has made great strides in tailoring the LEED-NC rating system to the unique characteristics of retail buildings by allowing multiple compliance approaches to provide an effective means of encouraging alternative transportation. Unfortunately, we had been inadvertently led by the USGBC to believe (and communicated to our clients) that we could utilize the AGR on our LEED-NC projects even during the Retail pilot prior to being fully balloted. We request that the LEED for Retail TAG allow our team to use the SSc4 credits from the AGR on these supermarkets in a manner similar to the way clusters of credits are currently allowed equivalency across already-established LEED rating systems. Specifically, can we would like to utilize the Bicycle Storage & Changing Rooms and Parking Capacity credit interpretations from LEED for Retail in these two LEED NC registered supermarkets.