Sustainable building practices are sexier when they are announced with a new building, according to industry experts, than with an existing, newly retrofitted building. In fact, experts say it’s more exciting to include green features in the design and tout them in a new project press release than it is to find available maintenance capital, meet a long list of rules and measurements and then announce every few months that your building may save an extra 5 percent a year.
Thus, existing building owners have an uphill battle to climb: Green may make a tenant happy, but return on investment becomes a lot more important to investors, lenders and appraisers. However, since every new property today now generally meets at least the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED Silver level, owners contemplating retrofits are feeling the pressure to go green.
