Though its College Sustainability Report Card grade for green building rose from a C in 2007 to a B in 2008 and 2009, schools like the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill each scored an A in the category in the last two years.

Sue Gott, a planner who worked on site considerations for the new building, insisted that green construction is a main priority for the University even if LEED certification isn’t obtained due to administrative costs.

“In anything that we are designing, we look for ways to be energy conscious and we look for sustainability opportunities,” she said.

GRASSROOTS GREENING

According to several professors and students involved in the building’s initial planning phases, University administrators, architects and the New York City-based architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox initially resisted certifying the building due to the extra expense.

The LEED system faces criticism for not only adding costs in the form of paperwork, extra research and LEED consultants, but also employing a too-rigid point system. For example, the green roofs of the Ross building — while no doubt environmentally beneficial — do not count toward a LEED certification.

Despite its faults, the system is still widely well-regarded because it helps force builders to think more broadly about environmental options. It also serves as an recognizable yardstick for green buildings nationwide. At the very least, a LEED certification generates good publicity.

“It would have been tremendously embarrassing if Ross had opened with less than the Silver, given what our competition is doing,” Swett said.

Several Erb Institute students started a petition for the Ross building to achieve LEED certification and set up meetings with Ross administrators to make their case for it.

“We just kind of took it on as a personal mission that we wanted to convince the leadership of the business school that they should consider making the building LEED,” said University alum Bryan Magnus, who was one of the first Erb students to begin researching sustainable options for the building. He said they approached the administration with “literally a binder of resources.” The student team of “rabble rousers,” as Swett called them, wanted to prove to the administration that the price premium for achieving the certification was not prohibitively high. Though some contend the cost of LEED certifying a building can be up to 25 percent of the total cost, Lyon, with the Erb Institute, said those estimates are far off base, with extra costs usually being less than one percent.

“The numbers are not huge,” said Prof. Andy Hoffman, an associate director of the Erb Institute. In a paper he co-authored, Hoffman cited several recent studies showing that when lowered operating costs are taken into account, the construction and certification costs of green building and standard buildings are negated by savings in energy costs within years.

Mercer said the cost of certifying the Ross project was one percent of the $110 million total construction cost, which would mean a hefty $1.1 million.

In meetings with Ross administrators, the Erb students presented case studies, best practices and options for materials. One student took Business School Assistant Dean Graham Mercer, who headed the project, on a tour of the LEED certified Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn.

After a few meetings, Magnus said the administration shifted from being “skeptically interested to sincerely interested” in pursuing the certification.

“The Erb students were the instrumental factor in moving the school to go for LEED certification,” Lyon said. Magnus said the administration “definitely hadn’t considered” achieving the LEED label.

“To their credit, the deans at Ross really listened to what the students had to say,” Lyon said. “Once they decided to pursue LEED certification, they’ve been very enthusiastic about it and really followed through.”

Mercer said that although the administration was “still debating” whether to certify the building when the Erb students first approached them, greening the building was a stated objective from the start.

“Our goal was always to make it an environmentally-friendly building,” he said. “We wanted to make some sort of statement that this is important.”

Mercer said a reason they decided to follow through with the certification was so students and employers would know the extent of the building’s green features.

“You can throw an awful lot of money into a building trying to get to some esoteric level with not a lot of gain,” he said.

SETTING A NEW STANDARD

Of course, a lot of the decisions on what could and couldn’t be made green came down to money. Swett said that by the time he got involved in the project, there were significant budget constraints.

“The costs very quickly were running out of control,” he said.