Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia will hold a brief ceremony and plaque unveiling to commemorate the Tate Student Center’s LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The event will be held on Thursday, April 22, at 4:30 p.m. inside the west plaza main entrance of the Tate Student Center.
The Tate Student Center is the sixth building on a university campus in the state of Georgia to be certified at the gold level and the second to be so designated in Athens.
LEED certification attests that a building was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across multiple metrics: energy savings, water efficiency, carbon dioxide emissions reduction, indoor environmental quality and stewardship of resources with sensitivity to their impacts.
LEED provides building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.
The Tate Student Center addition features a 26,378-square foot green roof as well as a 75,000-gallon cistern for rainwater and condensate water harvesting. The reclaimed water is being used to flush toilets, provide make-up water for campus fountains and irrigate the campus landscape from non-potable sources.
The building’s mechanical system is designed to maximize efficiencies with heat recovery and an economizer mode. Approximately 40 percent of the building materials were supplied by local or regional sources, and low volatile organic compound materials were used in carpet, paint, adhesives and sealants throughout the building to enhance air quality.
In addition, the university diverted three-quarters of the construction waste from landfills to a construction waste recycling facility that provided materials such as gravel mulch and soil to be used elsewhere on campus.
According to Danny Sniff, associate vice president and UGA’s chief architect, the building sits atop a former paved parking lot and an asphalt drive has been transformed into the iconic green space now known as the Georgia Quad.
Four other projects recently completed or currently under design and construction by the university are LEED-registered and tracking certification at the silver or gold level: the College of Pharmacy addition, a new residence hall on East Campus, the Georgia Museum of Art addition and the Richard B. Russell Building for the special collections libraries. Once certified, these buildings will establish a half-million square feet of documented LEED space in the university’s facilities inventory.