As the push toward sustainability continues, more commercial real estate developers in Greater Des Moines are considering the costs and benefits associated with going green.

Meredith Corp. has achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification on its 13-year-old corporate headquarters downtown as Iowa Health – Des Moines has decided to forgo accreditation on its 95-bed Methodist West Hospital in West Des Moines.

Meredith’s property at 1615 Locust St. was completed in 1997, a year before the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) first rolled out the LEED program. Methodist West opened its doors at 1660 60th St. in October 2009.

Both owners said their developments were constructed with environmentally sound building practices in mind.

“The building was always a pretty good building from a green point of a view,” said Mike Rehm, Meredith’s vice president of real estate and construction, noting that energy efficiency was one of the company’s primary goals when designing the facility.

And as the publishing and broadcasting company ramps up its sustainability initiatives – Meredith recycled 52 percent of its waste in 2009, compared with 27 percent in 2007 and 25 percent in 2006 – Rehm said moving forward with LEED certification made sense.

“We thought it was something that was appropriate to do right now,” he said. “Meredith is concentrating more on being green and being sustainable. Of course, LEED was not available back then.”

Meredith hired Terrus Real Estate Group LLC to walk it through the certification process.

“They were already doing a lot of the upkeep,” said Chris Draper, a senior engineer with Terrus. “In many ways, documenting what they are doing well in a way that was translatable into LEED” was the key to achieving certification.

“There were a few opportunities to provide some cost reductions in their start-up mode,” he said, referring to the way in which Meredith powers its facilities. Not only did that change in process help Meredith reduce its energy consumption; it also saved the company money.

Draper, who is part of Terrus’ Next Generation Operations (NxGO) team, said for some buildings, the “intelligent integration of all the systems you have available” is sometimes all it takes to accomplish both goals.

And though a multidiscipline approach may help buildings operate more efficiently, which, in turn, may reduce operational costs, not all owners are concerned with securing a LEED certificate to prove it.

“We are not going to pursue that,” said Chris Blair, chief clinical officer at Methodist West. “We have met a lot of the requirements. But it takes a lot of time, and we have decided to put those resources toward patient care.”

According to the project’s architect, however, sustainability was top of mind.

“During the design and construction process, the hospital, with the design and construction team, looked at all the elements that could be incorporated to increase efficiency, and to buy materials that were made of recycled content and didn’t release harmful gases,” said Gary Van Dyke, an architectural planner and designer with Shive-Hattery Group Inc.

“Our view is, we just stopped short of making the investment to get the paperwork done,” he said.

“They wanted to be good stewards of our natural resources, not wasting resources, conserving water and energy,” said Jim Lee, a building team leader with Shive-Hattery. “What I hear from a lot of clients is that the point is not about getting points just to get the certification.”

In 2009, as part of LEED v3, the latest version of the USGBC certification program, the organization implemented new standards that require building owners to submit annual reports on energy and water usage as a precondition of certification.

Van Dyke, referring to the hospital’s computerized building control system, said additional meters were installed to monitor water and energy use throughout the building’s life cycle.

And Lee said there has been talk of incorporating a performance measuring system as the hospital looks at how actual energy costs line up with initial projections.

“We just don’t have enough information at this point, to gauge a baseline usage,” Van Dyke said. “Now it’s just a matter of measuring that baseline and as we move forward, how is it operating in years to come?”

Other property owners are pondering ways to attract new occupants to decades-old multi-tenant buildings downtown as vacancy rates skyrocket.

Aviva USA, which in August moved 1,300 employees out of three downtown spaces to its recently completed headquarters building at 7700 Mills Civic Parkway in West Des Moines, is pursuing LEED certification on the new facility.

Wellmark Blue Cross Blue and Shield of Iowa, which by Thanksgiving will vacate five downtown office spaces when it moves 1,650 employees to its new corporate headquarters at 1331 Grand Ave., also plans to obtain a LEED certificate.

Following Wellmark’s relocation, an estimated 1.5 million square feet of competitive office space will be vacant in the downtown market.

But Draper said a June report by his NxGO research team indicates that achieving LEED certification may give owners of multi-tenant buildings – many of whom are working to juggle social and corporate responsibilities – a leg up on the competition.

“There is some empirical evidence that indicates that if you are going through LEED, you are getting a return on your investment through reduced operations costs, which then allows you to charge better rents,” he said.

The study, which was based on lease rates of commercial properties in Southern California and took into account a number of fundamental assumptions and other variables, concluded that “the value premium for a LEED-certified multi-tenant building in a competitive leasing environment is between 10 percent and 25 percent greater than comparable buildings.”

Draper also noted that some big site selectors, such as KMPG Cooperative International, a global financial services group, won’t even consider opening shop in a building that isn’t LEED certified.

But even without LEED, Draper said, making slight changes to processes to ensure that buildings are operating as efficiently as possible can help companies conserve cash.

In July, for example, Terrus implemented a change in an 18-story property in San Francisco, saving its client thousands of dollars.

“Because of the change in the way (Pacific Gas and Electric Co.) was going to be billing, the way that this company was turning on and off its building, it would have put them in a situation where they would have had an extra $150,000 in costs” per year, Draper said.

That 286,510-square-foot building was constructed in 1982.

In September, NPR reported that green building accounted for almost one-third of new construction in the United States, a 2 percent increase from 2005.

“The bottom line on anything green is ‘are you saving money?’” Draper said. The goal, he said, shouldn’t be merely to have “a flag on the wall.”

According to the Green Building Certification Institute’s website, Meredith’s building at 1605 Locust St. is the first LEED for Existing Buildings project to be certified in the state of Iowa. To date, eight LEED for New Construction projects and one LEED Retail project have been certified in Greater Des Moines.

At least 31 other metro-area commercial projects, including Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.’s office building at 1100 Locust St., the Hotel Fort Des Moines at 1000 Walnut St., and Delta Dental of Iowa’s building at 8900 Northpark Drive in Urbandale, have applied for LEED certification.

Mercy West Lakes Medical Center at 1601 60th St. in West Des Moines achieved LEED certification on April 5.