Taking the LEED
DNR project hits milestone for state
Neil Diamond would be proud. It might seem unusual, but the project team for the state Department of Natural Resources Northeast Regional Headquarters and Service Center took the famous singer at his word when designing the project in Howard. It truly will be forever in blue jeans. Recycled blue jeans, as it turns out, make for good sound insulation. And that’s just the sort of unexpected materials Oscar J. Boldt Construction’s team used in achieving silver level certification for the project from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership Energy and Environmental Design program.
“It’s the first state building with the LEED certification,” said Dave Shoemaker, Boldt’s project manager on the job.
The job included two buildings – a cold storage/service facility and the DNR office headquarters. At more than 34,000 square feet, the three-story office building provides space for 156 employees and lets the DNR combine staff from four different locations in the Green Bay area.
It’s on the side of a natural slope in the middle of a 16-acre lot dominated by a marsh, a creek and other wetlands. That location actually helped the project team reach its green-building and LEED goals, Shoemaker said.
Part of the LEED process calls for as much interior sunlight as possible, and constructing on a slop let the team expose the building’s lower half on the north side. That side of the building is covered with windows, allowing the DNR to use the basement for office space.
“It doesn’t hurt that, in my opinion, they have a pretty nice view,” Shoemaker said. “But the main purpose is to bring natural light into the work space. Ninety-eight percent of the work spaces have natural daylight.”
The project also achieved some nice percentages when it came to recycling. The team recycled 86 percent of the material from the job and easily outpaced the minimum requirements for LEED certification.
“It’s a credit to the people on the site,” Shoemaker said. “Certainly, training had to be done. Once that was done, things fell into place pretty favorably.”