HEADLINES:
St Charles County Community Goes Green
Posted on
April 6, 2009
When the citizens of Cottleville, Missouri,
decided it was time for their municipality to have its own city hall,
they also decided that the times demanded that they build an
environmentally friendly city hall. When construction was completed on
the town’s $5.3 million city hall and police station in December, city
government could boast that their new home used 30 percent less energy
than a similar traditional building and reduced water pollution by
capturing and treating water on site.
Paric Corporation managed construction of the
two-story, 15,888-square-foot facility, which sits on a 40-acre site at
Highway N and Fifth Street north of the Cottleville Town Centre. The
project was funded by a one-half cent sales tax approved by the town’s
voters in April 2006.
“The community, to their credit, wanted a LEED
project,” said Bob Leonard, Paric’s senior project manager. LEED, which
is short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a
building rating system designed by the U.S. Green Building Council. The
level of certification – certified, silver, gold, or platinum –
reflects how many environmental and sustainability standards were met
during the construction of the project. Certified buildings meet the
minimum number of standards to be considered “green”. Platinum
buildings meet the highest number of standards. “We’re going for silver
certification,” Leonard said. St. Charles County currently has no
green-certified buildings, although five facilities, including
Cottleville’s City Hall, have registered with the U.S. Green Building
Council and have begun the process of moving towards certification.
DESIGN BUILD : CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT : GENERAL CONTRACTING