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Melvin Mark Companies’ Columbia Square building in Portland, Ore., earned 4 Globes from the Green Building Initiative (GBI) on July 2. The Green Globes award evaluates buildings based on environmental design and sustainable operations, and the maximum reward of 4 Globes for Columbia Square is unprecedented in the U.S. The award also marks the first Globe rating of any amount for an Oregon building.
Melvin Mark Companies is a Portland-based commercial real estate corporation that owns and manages over 2.8 million square feet of property in Oregon. The 313,000 square foot Columbia Square has taken measures to reduce its footprint, scoring 88 percent on GBI’s evaluation. The office building now has energy savings of 40 percent, and a new high-efficiency chiller uses less ozone-depleting refrigerants than before. A revamped recycling program will increase recycling of paper, plastic, metal, glass, construction waste, e-waste, and food waste. An ENERGY STAR® certification means that the building is 31 percent more efficient than buildings of similar size. Melvin Mark Companies now plans to assess all of its real estate properties to be able to reduce water and energy consumption and waste output, and to improve the quality of indoor air.
Green Globes debuted in Portland two years ago after its initial practice in Canada. It is now used by 19 states and officially recognized by several federal departments. Buildings are evaluated in six categories: energy, water, emissions, resources, indoor environment, and environmental management systems.
The Green Globes test helps monitor buildings’ environmental performance, and is considered less expensive and more user-friendly than the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. Other notable buildings with Green Globe ratings are Whole Foods, Bristol-Myer Squib, JP Morgan Chase, the Clinton Presidential Library, Department of State, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, among seventy others.
