Green Parking Facility

The new parking garage at the Sant Monica Civic Center is stunning, and it’s on its way to becoming LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, too!

A solar photovoltaic array on the roof provides shade for top level parking and on-site renewable energy. The materials used in construction were recycled and finished with low-VOC paints and finishes. The building envelope utilizes low-e glazing to decrease heating and cooling loads and the mechanicals are energy efficient. A storm-drain water-treatment system helps reduce tainted runoff from directly entering the hydrosphere and greywater harvesting provides for landscaping and on-site facilities.

The garage has spaces set aside for electric vehicles, and offers free bike parking. However, Inhabitat points out that a “green” parking facility may be seen as an oxymoron, no matter how many environmentally-friendly features it has. Link -via Digg

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Manik, well said.

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I work with a lot of companies helping them to meet the LEED standards for certification. Some people might think it is oxymoronic to park fossil fuel burning cars in a "green" building, but the simple fact is that these types of buildings, along with factories and office buildings, are not going away. Our "developed" countries and economies need them to feed the machine. The more you can do to each property to make it environmentally friendly the better it is not only for the environment and health, but operating cost and assett value. A lot of property managers and plant managers see the initial overhead of an upfit and don't consider the savings in monthly heating and cooling costs and electricity, not to mention tax benefits and zoning allowances. People should get used to this type of thing, it's only goint to get more and more popular if not obligatory.

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Nice parking structure. With Tesla now producing electric cars, this structure's electric car parking should be getting put to use by LA's elites pretty quickly...