Light LEED Opens at Arterra SF
With new owners set to move into the the LEED light Arterra we throughout that we’d pay a visit to San Fran’s newest LEED certified condo. Arriving on bikes, we discovered that no bike racks exist for those wishing to inspect the demo models. Thus we had to pull out bikes into into the sales office. Walking though the corridors to the demo unit, we couldn’t help but smell the VOCs rising though the air. Kind of disappointing for a LEED-NC building.
Once we arrived at the demo unit, we felt sad to see granite countertops in both the 1 and 2 bedroom units. We asked the salesperson about the “Green” aspects of the condo and he didn’t know much about the Green aspects but he thought that most of the Green attributes (aka LEED points) weren’t located in the condos but we more part of the overall building. Give that man an organic cigar as most of the LEED points came about in the low hanging fruit (landscape, location and other interior elements) as the green aspects hardly appear in the living spaces. We noticed the dual flush toilets and triple pained windows but aside from that we didn’t note many green offerings.
With buyers scheduled to move in today or tomorrow, hopefully they don’t believe that they are moving into the greenest of the green condos. We’ve heard that the Arterra folks don’t really care about the whole LEED system other than using it as a marketing ploy. Too bad, as the sales figures for the Arterra sit at around 54% sold. Maybe people see it the Arterra for what it is, a very light Green housing option with a favorable price tag.
[...] such as San Francisco’s Arterra (which is on target to receive a LEED Silver up from LEED-NC which we previously had been informed) [...]