For the past three years, I write an article about green buildings in Miami. We have only three new entries this year. The 2012 additions are 396 Alhambra which is a brand new building and its neighbor, 255 Alhambra along with the three Westside Plaza buildings out in Doral. Here is the complete list of LEED-certified office buildings in Miami.
| Building | Submarket | Level | Type |
| 396 Alhambra | Coral Gables | Gold | C&S |
| 1450 Brickell | Brickell | Gold | C&S |
| Met II (Wells Fargo Ctr) | Downtown | Gold | C&S |
| 1000 Waterford | Miami Airport | Gold | C&S |
| Miami Green | Coral Gables | Silver | C&S |
| SE Financial Center | Downtown | Gold | EB |
| 255 Alhambra | Coral Gables | Gold | EB |
| 355 Alhambra | Coral Gables | Gold | EB |
| 2525 Ponce de Leon | Coral Gables | Gold | EB |
| Columbus Center | Coral Gables | Gold | EB |
| 1221 Brickell | Brickell | Silver | EB |
| 800 Brickell | Brickell | Silver | EB |
| One Brickell Square | Brickell | Silver | EB |
| Suntrust Int’l Tower | Downtown | Silver | EB |
| Douglas Entrance | Coral Gables | Silver | EB |
| 2555 Ponce | Coral Gables | Silver | EB |
| Royal Palm III | Miami Airport | Silver | EB |
| Westside Plaza | Miami Airport | Certified | EB |
| 701 Brickell | Brickell | Certified | EB |
| 701 Brickell | Brickell | Certified | EB |
Let’s quickly recap what the two main types of LEED-certification we have for office buildings in Miami. The first is Core & Shell (C&S). This is for new building construction. According to U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), “Core and shell covers base building elements such as structure, envelope and the HVAC system. LEED for Core & Shell is designed to be complementary to the LEED for Commercial Interiors rating system, as both rating systems establish green building criteria for developers, owners and tenants.” This means that the interior build-out (aka the tenants’ offices) could be green, but don’t have to be. It also does not address how the building is operated on a day-to-day basis. For that, we go to our next definition.
Existing Building Operations & Maintenance (EB) according to USGBC “addresses whole-building cleaning and maintenance issues (including chemical use), recycling programs, exterior maintenance programs, and systems upgrades. It can be applied both to existing buildings seeking LEED certification for the first time and to projects previously certified under LEED for New Construction, Schools, or Core & Shell.” That’s interesting. A new building could be LEED certified in two different categories. Typically a building first obtains its Energy Star rating and monitors its systems for at least a year for benchmarking before beginning this process.
These buildings have one common element – good design. Good design enables buildings to run efficiently and easily obtain to these certifications. Congratulations to all those property managers who put in a lot of hard work towards these awards.
