LA City College’s Plant Operations Building & Tennis Courts is a 17,000-square-foot commercial project located in Los Angeles, CA. Verdical Group provided:

• LEED v 2.2 Project Management

The Los Angeles Community College District’s City College Physical Plant (Maintenance and Operations Building) & Tennis Courts provide new centralized facilities for the City College’s Maintenance and Operations Department. Verdical Group worked with the project team to implement many sustainable features in order for the project to achieve LEED NC v2.2 Silver certification — beyond its initial target of LEED Certified. 

The M&O building and tennis courts are sited on a dense urban campus with various mass transit options and amenities located within a half-mile walking distance. This close proximity to public transportation and community services promotes car-free living, which reduces the M&O staff’s carbon footprint.  

Overall, this Los Angeles City College project was carefully designed with climate change in mind. The project team successfully implemented a combination of water efficient and waterless restroom fixtures, which enabled the M&O building to achieve a 40% baseline reduction in water use. Cutting back on a building’s water use is crucial for all projects, but especially one located in a drought-stricken city such as Los Angeles. 

The project team used energy analysis and simulation to quantify an energy cost savings of 37%, using the ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2004. Other design strategies include an exterior canopy to shade the south exposure glazing, heat reflective roofing material, and energy-efficient light fixtures. The Maintenance and Operations (M&O) building also includes roof mounted photovoltaic panels that produce roughly 8% of the total annual energy cost of the project. 

Taking advantage of locally sourced materials, the project team was able to source 28% of total building materials within 500 miles of the City College, thereby cutting down on emissions resulting from long-distance transportation. Along with this great use of regional materials, the team also achieved a point for utilizing FSC Certified Wood for 54% of the project’s total new wood-based building materials. As an added bonus, all indoor composite wood and agrifiber materials used on the project were completely free of added urea-formaldehyde—a potentially harmful human carcinogen.