The city’s new MET Transfer Center in downtown Billings is a platinum hit.
The city found out this week that it has been awarded the highest certification — LEED Platinum — from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The $5 million bus transfer center at 220 N. 25th St., which opened last summer, met the stringent certification standards by incorporating solar panels, a ground-source heat pump system for heating and cooling, rooftop gardens and low-energy-use features.
The best news, said city Transit Manager Ron Wenger, is that “everything had a purpose. It wasn’t just green for green’s sake.”
“I did not want to do anything that did not save me money down the road in operations,” he said.
The gardens on the building’s roof, for instance, insulate the roof membrane from UV rays, extending its life from a typical 20 years to as many as 50. The rooftop gardens, like the sandstone blocks on the building’s exterior, also create thermal mass that keeps the building cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
The 50 photovoltaic panels on the site generate half to three-fourths of the energy used by the building, which is also equipped with dual-flush toilets, low-flow faucets, programmable thermostats and clerestory windows, panels of glass at the top of the walls running around the building, to let in natural light.
Co-designers of the building were architect Mike Tuss and LEED-accredited professional Anya Fiechtl, both with CTA Architects Engineers.
The U.S. Green Building Council’s rating system for high-performance green buildings has become the national standard. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
Out of a possible 69 points, a project must earn 52 to achieve a platinum rating, and the transfer center earned 53 points. Tuss said they were hoping for platinum but figured they’d probably end up with the next-highest rating, gold.
Fiechtl said CTA and the city didn’t tell anyone they were shooting for platinum, in fear of jinxing the project or getting people’s hopes up.
Another big factor in obtaining platinum certification was that nearly all the construction waste was recycled or diverted. Trees removed from the site were planted in city parks and asphalt that was torn up was crushed and reused.
None of the rain and snow that falls on the transfer center enters the city’s storm water system. It either flows into landscaped islands on the property or drains into a boulder field under the concrete driveway, from there to percolate back into the groundwater. Water that falls on the rooftop gardens — planted with low-maintenance, drought-resistance grass and other plants — also trickles down into the groundwater.
On the front of the transfer center building is a two-panel display explaining some of the site’s energy-saving features, and not just the big-ticket items like the solar panels.
“There’s a lot of little things you can do as well — things people can do at home,” Fiechtl said.
Those include — besides the toilets, faucets and thermostats — high-efficiency LED lighting, easily recyclable linoleum flooring and a drip-irrigation system for the landscaped areas.
Pierce Flooring is proud to have provided flooring for part of this project. The article can be found in the Billings Gazette.
When it comes to the environment, our extensive use of wood and wood products can directly affect our planet’s forests. Only a few decades ago, consumers could never know if their wood floors were built from lumber that damaged this valuable global resource. Because of this, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) was started in 1993 to set and certify standards of responsible harvesting of our world’s wood. Today, the organization is recognized in over 50 countries and by every major environmental group.
