DALLAS, September 28, 2009 – Counter to the assumption that attaining LEED certification requires an enormous capital expense, Dallas-based Westmount Realty Capital, LLC recently earned Silver Certification for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System for core and shell for an existing office building. The certification for LEEDs-CS (core and shell) was presented by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) for Riverside Commons Building No. 2 in Irving, Texas.

The certification was achieved for a minimal, additional expense over the approximately $2 million of an already planned building remodel.

The LEED-CS certification is the first of its kind in the Dallas area adding Riverside Commons to the list of less than 300 certified LEED for Existing Buildings projects, according to USGBC figures.

“LEED for Existing Building is a growing rating system, second only to the LEED for New Construction rating system,” said Marie Coleman, USGBC communications associate.

Westmount was in the process of seeking the LEED certification when the property sold, receiving notification of the building’s certification after its sale.

In January 2009, an entity affiliated with Research in Motion - maker of the BlackBerry mobile communications device - purchased Riverside Commons, the 460,297-square-foot, six-building office campus in Las Colinas. RIM was a major tenant in the complex since February 2007 leasing about one-third of the office complex for its U.S. headquarters.

“We signed a tenant for one-third of Building 2. To help fill the remaining two-thirds of the building, we moved forward on refurbishing it,” said Steve Kanoff, Westmount’s executive vice president and partner. “We already had that capital expense planned, so we thought it would be good to explore what it would cost to achieve LEED certification.”

“Not only was it the right thing to do, but we also believed it would give us a competitive leasing edge with other space in the marketplace,” Kanoff said.

As it turned out, the cost of the work that needed to be done versus the cost of getting LEED certification was minimal.

“We busted a common myth that building to LEED certification would be too costly,” Kanoff said. “It is a common misconception that it is economically infeasible. The belief is that it is harder to achieve that certification in a cost efficient manner, but we proved that was not the case.”

Because the building was constructed in the mid-1980s with single pane glass, it was going to be difficult to achieve any LEED certification without mitigating the glass-related energy loss, Kanoff said. Testing energy models with the single plane glass led Westmount and its architect – Dallas-based Corgan Associates – to the initial conclusion that the only way to obtain those required energy savings would be to install a more expensive heating and air conditioning system.

The solution to that challenge – use of a window film – came from an idea Kanoff presented to the architecture team.

“The answer was a window film we could apply to all the windows which achieved the same sort of effect of double pane or thermal pane glass. So, for $60,000 worth of window film we got the desired effects,” Kanoff said.

With the window film, Westmount was able to use a less expensive heating and air conditioning system to achieve the energy savings.

“I think we did the right thing,” he said. “There was very little premium associated with it, too. If you’re not LEED compliant, you are eliminating a large pool of potential tenants since an ever-increasing number of companies have a ‘green mandate’ when searching for office space,” Kanoff said. “Tenants have an infinite number of choices for office space in Dallas and we wanted to distinguish our property from the competition.”

As far as pursuing the LEED certification after selling the property, Kanoff said, another benefit to Westmount was that the application for Riverside also educated him and his company on the LEED certification process.

“We’re much better off having the institutional knowledge and applying that to future projects,” Kanoff said. “Retrofitting an existing building leaves much less of a carbon impact than new construction, too. This is about as green as you can get. Even the interior demolition was done under the LEED specifications.”

USGBC has vested interest in greening existing buildings, added USGBC’s Coleman.

“Retrofitting buildings ideally would be most green, not having to tear-down and rebuild or build from scratch, but rather greening the existing stock of buildings which so desperately need energy retrofits, etc.,” she added.

About Westmount Realty Capital, LLC

Westmount Realty Capital, LLC is a dynamic, privately held Dallas-based company with activities in commercial real estate investment, development and lending. The company’s principals have completed more than $1 billion in transactions and have more than 50 years combined experience in the real estate business. Driven by market forces coupled with intuition for future trends and unlocking unrealized value through superior execution, the group has built a diverse portfolio including industrial properties, retail centers, office buildings, multifamily communities and several historic buildings in downtown Dallas as well as land developments.

Media contact:
Cynthia Pharr Lee, C. Pharr & Company
cynthia@pharrpr.com
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