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| 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! –
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