Waving the Green Banner
By BOM Editorial Staff - January 2008
In 2004, Gary Christensen attended NFMT for the first time. The owner of The Christensen Corp., a commercial development firm located in Boise, Idaho, was looking for ideas and technologies he could apply to a speculative 11-story office building in downtown Boise.
He found what he was looking for — and then some. Christensen learned about green design, sustainable technologies, and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system.
Inspired, he returned to Boise with a new challenge for his design team: transform the Banner Bank Building into a LEED Platinum facility. Within 90 days, his team of local architects and engineers had overcome the shock of “having to go green” and were well into the design of the 195,000 square foot building. In August 2006, the Banner Bank Building was certified LEED-CS Platinum.
“The 2004 NFMT conference was the event that tipped me over into sustainable design,” says Christensen. “A team of vendors at the show finally made a cogent economic case for raised floor after years of failed attempts by others. I went home, challenged our team to see how far we could take these concepts, and ended up with our LEED-CS Platinum Banner Bank Building.”
Christensen returns to NFMT this year to share his experience, and discuss how a for-profit developer justified a truly high-performance building. The session, “Zero to Platinum in 90 Days” takes place Tuesday, March 4, at 8:00 a.m.
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For more information and to register.
New for NFMT 2008:
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