Unico garners green building awards

The IBM Building in Seattle is certified LEED-EB Gold.

Unico, a Seattle-based real estate investment company, announced in late November that three of its Seattle properties were certified by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – Existing Building (LEED-EB) rating system earning Gold. Unico can now boast the largest portfolio of LEED-EB properties in the city, according to the company.

Its Seattle LEED-EB buildings are all in what Unico calls the “Metropolitan Tract,” a 10-acre parcel of land in downtown Seattle that includes the historic Skinner Building built in 1926. The three buildings comprise about 716,000 square feet of space. There were just nine LEED-EB certified properties in all of Washington on Dec. 1, 2009, according to the Green Building Certification Institute.

Unico says it has an ambitious plan to earn LEED certification for 78 percent of its entire portfolio by the end of 2010. It’s “a doubly good effort” for the company, according to Brett Phillips, Unico’s sustainability project manager. “We're doing well financially by the projects,” he says. “We’re creating a brand of customer service that is high performing and … making the businesses of our customers and clients more sustainable. Our efforts on sustainability reinforces that.”

In the current market, it’s hard to quantify the affect that certifying these buildings will have on rental rates, Phillips says. Doing so is expected to save Unico money however, because Seattle City Light is raising electricity rates by almost 14 percent in 2010. The retrofits in one building, the 1960-built Puget Sound Plaza, reduced its electricity consumption by 600 megawatts (MW) annually at a cost of about $500,000 for efficiency upgrades. At another, the IBM Building built in 1964, $1.6 million in energy upgrades lowered its electricity consumption by 1530 MW per year, according to Unico.

Unico manages about 1.7 million square feet in the Metropolitan Tract and about 10 million square feet around the western United States including 100 Pine in San Francisco, the first multi-tenant office building to receive LEED-EB certification in California.