Gensler Achieves First LEED-Silver Auto Dealership

by Tracy Ostroff
Associate Editor

How do you . . . incorporate sustainability into a seemingly incompatible building type?

Summary: Gensler architects weren’t sure they could pull off their goal of a LEED-certified car dealership. The complex mix of building types in North Texas didn’t exactly lend itself at first glance to the level of sustainable features that would be required to meet the designation. The architects pressed themselves to rethink the conventional methodology for building design and ultimately created a facility of practical sustainability fit for the business sensibilities of an independent Toyota dealership owner and the vagaries of Mother Nature in McKinney, Tex.

The Gensler team, led by Studio Director and Automotive Practice Area Leader Rick Ferrara, AIA, promised not to put bells and whistles on the dealership and to forgo strategies without practical payback in a reasonable amount of time for business owner Pat Lobb, unless he directed otherwise. “We said you can’t slow down the design and construction process, and any unusual expenditures of money had to have a return on investment study that shows a reasonable payback,” Lobb said. He defined “reasonable” as three to five years.

The total project cost was about $8 million for the 56,000-square-foot facility. The LEED premium was less than $400,000, and the additional cost has a return on investment of about three to five years. “He’ll be in the building much longer than that, so he’s invested in his building and in himself. Everything we did there has a really good economic story to tell,” Ferrara says. “We were able to take a building type that most thought was 100 percent incompatible with sustainable design and show sustainability can be made part of any project type.”

Education for architects, public
Ferrara says a major project theme was education. “While our primary goal was to design a sustainable project, we wanted to make sure that we do so with green features that the average citizen would recognize as special.” One such strategy is a living green wall along the highly visible rear and sides of the building.

Other elements include:

• Portal entry elements that reduce energy by screening the showroom from direct light
• ACM exterior panels that are 95 percent recycled aluminum and make up the exterior of the building
• A water cistern that captures condensation from both interior and exterior air conditioners and runoff rain water into an 8,600 gallon cistern; the collected water is used to irrigate the landscape
• A roof system of multiple layers of metal, concrete foam, and white membrane to reduce energy
• A car wash with a closed-loop recycling system; the water is ionized to eliminate the need for blow drying
• Interior elements, for example, some of the carpet is made from recycled corn, some contains recycled automotive glass in the backing, and bathroom accent carpet is made from recycled bottles.

“This project gave us is the ability to interact with the general public about sustainable design, and also architecture as a bigger idea,” Ferrara says. “It has really connected people better to buildings and to a sense of what architects are capable of doing.”

Gung-ho for sustainable architecture
Ferrara praises Toyota as a green company, but quickly points out that independent owner Lobb had no additional incentives for pursuing sustainability or going green. “He just stepped up to the plate.” That enthusiasm proved infectious. “Once you start thinking this way, and you really start realizing the impact, it starts to take on a life of its own and becomes second nature,” Ferrara says. “Its part of what I dubbed eco-enthusiasm … As part of our responsibility as stewards of the environment, we have a huge impact on the environment in the U.S. and globally. It’s a matter of making sure we equip our design teams with the best tools they can to do architecture in the most responsible way possible.”

Simple ah-ha moments
“With the increase in energy prices and more focus being put on how we use our natural resources and our responsibility as building designers not to be some of the worst causes of consumption in this country, we need to go back and look at virtually everything we know about buildings,” Ferrara notes. “I said, ‘let’s analyze everything from the front property line to the back property line and make sure that we’re not simply repeating something we all learned together 15 years ago because it was the right thing to do then.’”

The process yielded new ideas, such as the notion they could hang a suspended ceiling in the tech shop. Yes, there would be an upfront cost, but it would result in smaller air-conditioning units and fewer of them, which would be cheaper to buy and operate. The tech shop also became a magnet for potential employees. The architects conducted a lot of face-to-face meetings, Ferrara noted, saying it’s crucial for the full team to be committed to the sustainable project. “It’s mostly attitude, but it’s vital that our contractors are as committed to sustainability as we are.”