LEED Briefing: Yahoo!, GE, Waterton Residential, Testa Produce

GE’s appliances and lighting division has opened its new, LEED platinum certified data center at its Louisville, Ky., appliance park headquarters. GE says that the data center is 34 percent better in terms of energy savings than a typical code-compliant building, and that 35 percent of its energy use is offset through the purchase of renewable energy. It is the only LEED platinum data center in the state, GE says.

LEED gold certification has been awarded to Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters.  Jones Lang LaSalle managed the LEED certification process for the 1 million-square-foot collection of seven office buildings. The 11-year-old buildings earned LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council under the existing buildings standard.

One East Delaware, an apartment community owned by Waterton Residential in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, has earned the Windy City’s first multifamily LEED existing building silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Waterton says it is the third largest community in the country to earn this certification.

Testa Produce Inc.’s new distribution center has won a LEED platinum rating. The 91,300-square-foot facility has a 180-panel photovoltaic solar array and a solar water heating system that supplies all the hot water used in the building.