Green Globes for Green Grocers



Restaurant Style Kitchen in Whole Foods Market



Since 2007 CSHQA has designed five new stores for Whole Foods Market in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho (and counting).  All five earned two or three Green Globes, the most recent coming just two days after the grand opening of the Boise, Idaho store!

Yes, we are proud of it, and we and the owner worked hard to get there.  Both of our businesses have made sustainable practices a part of our business model, including the pursuit of practical and applicable design and product knowledge.  At the same time I can tell you it’s totally within reach:  Good, sustainable design will earn two Green Globes.  Extra innovation, particularly in energy systems, can push a project up to three. 

It’s not routine.  Every store is a little different and we’re learning from each one.  One major challenge is mitigating the intensive energy consumption of cooking appliances and exhaust fans found in multiple restaurant style prep lines.  From an energy perspective, Whole Foods could be considered a restaurant with a grocery store.  Neither LEED nor Green Globes is quite adept at merging the two.  Every point earned elsewhere works to counterbalance the ‘oven’ effect.  Even the single points for bicycle repair stations (no kidding!) for Boulder, Colorado and Boise helped us in the end.

Here are lessons learned from five successive stores:

• Get everyone engaged from day one, including the contractor and subcontractors.
• Start at the beginning with good, sustainable design.
• Leverage your best assets – indoor air quality, recycling during construction, materials selection, daylighting, native landscaping. 
• Strive to manage the most difficult aspects – energy and water consumption.
• Take advantage of unique opportunities – aka challenges.
• Attend to your paperwork – Projects may be assessed as soon as construction is substantially complete, provided the paperwork and calculations are complete.
• Extra efforts do pay off!  –

Energy System Upgrades are Only Half the Story



Real Impacts on Our Environment



Commercial property owners are always looking for ways to enhance property values, reduce energy costs and attract quality tenants.  Washington Group Plaza in Boise, Idaho is a great example of what can be achieved with existing buildings when owners choose to incorporate an energy management strategy in addition to physical plant upgrades. 

Throughout the 2000’s utility-funded incentives and programs like the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act encouraged building and institutional owners throughout Idaho to make significant energy system upgrades.  Starting around 2005 the owners of Washington Group Plaza, worked with Idaho Power and others to make numerous upgrades to the heating, cooling, and electrical systems.  However, like many projects of the era, improvements at the 590,000 sf Washington Group Plaza were installed without the means to monitor or manage future energy usage. 

[It’s a bit like installing a new furnace and double-pane thermal windows while keeping the old, non-programmable thermostat.  You will save energy, but wouldn’t it be nice to have more control?]

Since 2010 CSHQA has been working with facilities management and onsite maintenance teams to design new energy management systems for two of the Washington Group buildings.  The intended purpose was to earn energy efficiency certifications.  After the required year of benchmarking – monitoring and verifying energy usage – both buildings received Energy Star ratings.  What the owner may not have expected was the additional and very sizeable savings in energy and operating costs:  In the first year the team saw a 41% reduction in electricity use for an annual savings of $360,000!

Short story:  Equipment alone is not enough.  Until CSHQA and the campus maintenance team could actively track power usage and adjust operations accordingly, part of the “program” savings were on paper only.  To realize FULL savings requires taking the next step to monitor and adjust building systems as they are actually used.  Hence, the second half of the story - the management strategy.  –