The Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal recently named the rising Knight Management Center, scheduled to open this spring, its 2010 Green Project of the Year. The center, which will house Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), is also on track to earn Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design (LEED) Platinum certification by implementing new energy-conserving technologies.
“[Our efforts] had a lot to do with being a leader and demonstrating what it means to be green,” said Knight Management Center Program Director Kathleen Kavanaugh.
The Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal presents a Green Project of the Year award to both a public and a private construction project each year. Turner Construction, the company contracted to build the Knight Management Center, nominated the project for the private award. The project came with an estimated $350 million price tag.
Kavanaugh pointed to community factors for the project, which employed around 400 people day-to-day and spent more than $12 million per month, helping to stimulate the local economy, she said. The project’s impending LEED Platinum certification, which is the highest level of certification the U.S. Green Building Council awards, was a major factor in the prize.
In addition to careful selection of resources in building the Knight Management Center, the project has many features to provide lasting energy conservation that Kavanaugh said will make the complex consume 46 percent less energy than an average building of its size.
Notable among the building’s green systems is a water collection and conservation system that reduces the use of potable water by 80 percent. Gutters across the roof of the complex collect rainwater and store it in a 75,000-gallon holding tank underground for use in plant irrigation and toilet water.
The south-slanting roofs on the Knight Management Center feature solar paneling that will compensate for 12.5 percent of the complex’s electric power. In all, the center will house 4,275 solar modules, more than tripling the number of solar cells on campus.
California solar company Solar City owns and installed the solar cells on the center, and will sell the power to Stanford. Kavanaugh said that although solar energy costs more than conventional sources of electricity, the efficiency of the buildings compensates to produce a predicted 75 percent net decrease in energy costs over the existing GSB facility. The current GSB facility is comprised of a main building constructed in 1966 and peripheral buildings constructed in 1989 and 1999.
“We’ve done lots to try to be the most energy-efficient we can,” said Kavanaugh.
Other details of the project lean toward green. Fifty percent of the 12-acre site, previously a parking lot, has been preserved for open space, and the parking has been moved to an underground lot beneath the section of the complex where the new faculty office buildings stand. In that green space are mostly drought-tolerant plants and more than 60 trees preserved or transplanted from the previous parking site.
Four of the Knight Management Center’s eight building are scheduled to open in January 2011. The entire facility is set to open for use in March 2011.
Correction: In an earlier version of this story, The Daily incorrectly reported that the Knight Management Center has already earned the LEED Platinum certification. In fact, the building is on track to earn the certification but must wait until the building is finished.