As time has gone on, environmental considerations have become more and more important in real estate development. While this trend has intensified in Winnipeg in recent years with LEED developments like Manitoba Hydro Place (360 Portage Avenue) and Centrepoint (311 Portage Avenue), the notion of sustainable development is nothing new for Shindico.
Our 25,000 sq. ft. corporate head office building at 1355 Taylor Avenue, developed in 2005 to LEED standards, is heated and cooled by a net neutral open loop geothermal system. This means that the system does not consume any water or natural gas, and the electricity needed to heat and cool Shindico’s 14,756 square feet office is comparable to that of a 2,000 square foot single family home. Additionally, the building makes use of natural Manitoba materials with very low LCA (life cycle assessment) scores like reconstituted flax straw cupboards and tyndall stone cladding.
Knowing that we had one of the most environmentally friendly office buildings in Winnipeg, we decided to pursue a BOMA BEST® designation. The BOMA BEST® program is the “Canadian industry standard for commercial building sustainability certification.” The program is the only one of its kind in Canada and assesses six key areas: energy, water, waste reduction and site, emissions and effluents, indoor environment and environmental management system. The building did exceptionally well in the energy, indoor environment and environmental management system categories, scoring 89%, 95% and 98% respectively. For more information on the BOMA BEST® program, navigate to: www.bomabest.com.
At BOMA’s November 19th luncheon, our head office was Certified Gold. We were very pleased and honored as there are only 5 other buildings in Manitoba that have received this status. I thoroughly enjoyed the accreditation process as I was able to learn a tremendous amount about both our building and sustainable development best practices. We have begun analyzing our portfolio and look forward to achieving BOMA BEST® status on some of our other award winning developments!
Alex Akman
Property Administrator
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