New office tower beats energy estimates

The top half of Bellevue's Hines Expedia Tower.

In September, the Hines Expedia Tower became the first newly constructed office building in Bellevue, Wash., to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The 20-story office building is home to Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE), which took up residence in the tower in 2008. Since then, eight other tenants have moved in, leading to a 98 percent occupancy rate for the 413,000 square-foot Hines Expedia Tower. Bellevue’s overall vacancy rate reached 12.7 percent during the first quarter of 2009, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

The building was designed by Seattle-based LMN Architects, which says it focused on allowing as much daylight penetration into the offices as possible. The firm also used a building information modeling system to develop the building’s energy models and a glazing system for its windows.

The tower’s daily energy use is beating its modeling estimates, according to Houston-based Hines, the building’s developer, thanks in part to controls software developed by Siemens (NYSE: SI), which manages the building’s floor-by-floor mechanical systems. In the 10 months since it reached 98 percent occupancy, net energy consumption is less than 40,000 Btu per square foot per year.

Green building may play a huge role in the development of downtown Bellevue, a growing city located 30 minutes from Seattle across Lake Washington. In the past five years, it has added more than 3,500 housing units, two million square feet of office space and about one million square feet of retail, according to reports.

Hines declined to release the cost of the tower. The company says it is committed to developing all of its projects to LEED standards and has more than 89 million square feet that have already been certified, pre-certified or registered under the various LEED rating systems.