SITES Pilot

Parking Lots will Test New Sustainable Landscape Rating System

The Sustainable Sites Initiative™ (SITES™) announced today the selection of parking lot projects at Peninsula College (Port Angeles) and Olympic College (Bremerton) as two of the first landscapes to participate in a program testing the nation’s first rating system for green landscape design, construction and maintenance. O’Brien & Company is guiding both projects through the SITES pilot process.

“Parking lots are a perfect type of project to test the SITES initiative” said Elizabeth Powers, company Principal and part-owner. “They are a really common type of infrastructure and this gives us the opportunity to re-imagine them as so much more. What if all our parking lots cleaned stormwater, provided shade and wildlife habitat, served as multi-modal transportation hubs, or even generated energy?”

The 5.75 acre Olympic College Student Parking Lot project was designed by Schacht Aslani Architects and SvR. . The site was developed to meet the increased needs and growth of student enrollment on campus. The site’s sustainability features include stormwater treatment through the use of rain gardens, bioswales, porous pavements and localized infiltration, additional vegetation to break up the asphalt parking lot, and new site lighting that meets LEED goals for reducing light pollution. O’Brien & Company helped Schacht Aslani develop a sustainable campus master plan for Olympic College, and will be providing support as the parking lot attempts to follow the SITES requirements throughout the pilot. Participation in the SITES pilot could identify further opportunities to green the project and will help benchmark the results.

The Peninsula College Campus New Entry and Parking Lot Renovation is a 4.2 acre site that was also designed by Schacht Aslani. The parking lot, previously a large asphalt lot, is starting construction and will feature plantings with native and adapted plants. New trees will provide shade and reduce the heat island effect. Plantings for the bioswales and rain gardens were designed to detain and clean stormwater runoff from the paved surfaces. O’Brien & Company conducted a preliminary  goal-setting workshop to present the project team with several frameworks to explore the greening of the project. This facilitated discussion covered the Living Sites & Infrastructure Challenge, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) credits in the sites category, and the new SITES (Sustainable Sites Initiative). Participating in the SITES pilot will test how well early sustainability planning prepares projects for certification through green building rating systems.

Walter Schacht, Principal at Schacht Aslani explains “Aesthetically, surface lots should look like landscaped areas with some space for parking within them. Functionally, these projects should address stormwater runoff quality and quantity issues as well as the heat island effect often associated with parking surfaces.”

These projects will join more than 150 others from 34 states as well as from Canada, Iceland and Spain.

Like the other pilot projects, these sites will test the point system for achieving different levels of site sustainability on a 250-point scale, and the performance benchmarks associated with specific credits.

The full list of pilot projects in Washington State includes:

• Hillside Terrace Neighborhood Revitalization (Tacoma)
• Madrona Street High Performance Home (Bellingham)
• Olympic College Student Parking Lot (Bremerton)
• Pendleton Avenue Improvements (Fort Lewis)
• East Bay Public Plaza (Olympia)
• Peninsula College Campus New Entry and Parking Lot Renovation (Port Angeles)
• South Kitsap Regional Park (Port Orchard)
• Theater Commons and Donnelly Gardens (Seattle)
• Bradner Gardens Park Development (Seattle)
• 9th Ave NW Park Greyfield Redevelopment (Seattle)
• KCTS9 Site and Building Renovation (Seattle)

Nationwide, SITES pilot projects include the Smithsonian Institution’s African American History & Culture museum and a New Orleans’ project to absorb storm water on the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Other pilot projects that include academic and corporate campuses, public parks with hundreds of acres, transportation corridors and private residences of less than one acre.

SITES will use feedback from this and the other selected projects during the pilot phase, which runs through June 2012, to revise the final rating system and reference guide by early 2013. The U.S. Green Building Council, a stakeholder in the Sustainable Sites Initiative, anticipates incorporating the guidelines and performance benchmarks into future iterations of its LEED® Green Building Rating System™.