While reducing the environmental impact of facilities and promoting a healthier work environment are emerging as central goals for a growing number of jurisdictions and agencies in the corrections and justice market, many facility owners, administrators and managers remain skeptical about how to fund such programs given the constant pressure to keep operating costs low, especially as energy prices continue to climb.
Some of the most important benefits of green building design are often overlooked because they are the most difficult to quantify, but safety, health and productivity of correctional officers in particular may be motivating factors in greening correctional facilities.
Indoor Air Quality
SAN FRANCISCO — Construction of a new $94.5 million Institute for Regeneration Medicine Building at University of California, San Francisco, is scheduled to begin this summer.
The 73,000-square-foot building will house the university’s regeneration program and offer space for collaboration among scientific and medical researchers.
Rafael Vinoly Architects designed the building to fit along a narrow hillside between a surface street and UCSF Medical Center. The building will be terraced and will follow the arc of the hillside.
KENNESAW, Ga. — The passive design concepts at Kennesaw State University’s new social science building help the facility earn LEED Silver certification for its passive design.
The design of the 164,000-square-foot building features window placement that avoids direct light, building materials with recycled content and strategy orientation of the facility.
Most of the green aspects of the building were based on an intuitive, efficient design, says Bill Clark, a principal for Stevenson & Wilkinson Stang & Newdow, Inc., the design firm for the project.
Green Schools Offer New Lessons
In the new age of green buildings, input from school officials, parents and the community is crucial to ensure that a new facility is designed with components that are the most beneficial to the people it serves. Environmentally friendly bells and whistles are rendered irrelevant and sometimes become costly add-ons if they are not understood, accepted and harnessed by the community.
CHICAGO — Greenbuild, the U.S. Green Building Council’s annual conference, swept through Chicago last week, cramming the facilities at McCormick Place with more than 21,000 attendees and 850 exhibitors.
The conference site appeared overwhelmed at times with limited space for educational seminars and attendees waiting in long lines to hear speakers and purchase food and beverages.
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OS ANGELES — A new $102.5 million crime lab in Los Angeles County designed to meet LEED certification recently opened its doors, changing the way law enforcement in the region handles criminal cases and the way students learn their trade.
WASHINGTON — The new Washington Nationals professional baseball franchise may finish the 2007 season in last place but come next 
spring they will lead the league when they swing for the fences in the first environmentally sustainable sports stadium in the United States.
Greenbelt, Md. — NASA broke ground on a $56 million eco-friendly Exploration Sciences Building at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center here.
The 265,500-square-foot research-laboratory and office building, which is registered for LEED Silver certification, will house personnel from the astrophysics and solar systems exploration divisions and the office of the directorate.
WEBSTER, Texas — The Houston metropolitan land market and simple long-run economics pushed Jacob White Construction to develop the three-story East Medical Center project around environmentally sustainable technologies that may win LEED gold certification with the largest living roof in the state, according to officials.
But company president Jeff Mickler also sees the project, which features two 48,000-square-foot medical buildings, as a marketing tool that can differentiate Jacob White in the market.
