In a written Memorandum and Order that was issued on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Sand granted USGBC’s motion to dismiss Henry Gifford’s amended complaint in Gifford et al. v. USGBC. As you will recall, the motion was fully submitted to the Southern District of New York on May 6 and Judge Sand heard oral argument back on July 26. Again, the motion was based on Rule 12(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and claimed that (1) Mr. Gifford and his fellow plaintiffs lacked standing to maintain their suit; and (2) the amended complaint failed to state a cause of action upon which the SDNY could grant relief to Mr. Gifford and his fellow plaintiffs.

Unfortunately for those of us who were hoping that the Southern District would analyze the 2008 NBI study – and USGBC’s dissemination thereof – as part of its analysis, Judge Sand’s decision rested squarely on his finding that Mr. Gifford and his fellow plaintiffs lacked standing to assert their claims under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act. (In other words, the opinion does not address the underlying merits of Mr. Gifford’s claims against USGBC.)

Judge Sand identified two tests that Second Circuit courts have used to assess standing under the Lanham Act: the “strong categorical” and the “reasonable commercial interest” tests. The former requires a plaintiff to “be a competitor of the defendant and allege a competitive injury.” The latter requires a plaintiff to demonstrate “(1) a reasonable interest to be protected against the false advertising; and (2) a reasonable basis for believing that the interest is likely to be damaged by the alleged false advertising.”

After quickly disposing of any standing argument under this first test, Judge Sand turned to the second test:

Plaintiffs do not adequately allege a reasonable commercial interest that is likely to be damaged by USGBC’s alleged false statement: the press release indicating that new LEED-certified buildings perform on average “25-30% better than non-LEED-certified buildings in terms of energy use.” The “reasonable basis” prong requires the plaintiff to show “both likely injury and a causal nexus to the false advertising.” As to likely injury, Plaintiffs’ allegation that “LEED has begun to subsume the Plaintiffs’ roles’ is entirely speculative.” . . . Because there is no requirement that a builder hire LEED-accredited professionals at any level, let alone every level, to attain LEED certification, it is not plausible that each customer who opts for LEED certification is a customer lost to Plaintiffs. . . . Whatever the merits of Plaintiffs’ claim that the conclusion of the [NBI study] was false, their allegation that their “sales are specifically affected by [USGBC's] behavior” is too speculative to permit recovery under the Lanham Act.

By dismissing Mr. Gifford’s federal claims, Judge Sand was also able to dismiss his state law claims (alleging false advertising and deceptive trade practices) on jurisdictional grounds.

Earlier today, USGBC issued a press release with comments on the decision from Rick Fedrizzi. We’ve reached out to Mr. Gifford’s attorneys – who could still, among other things, appeal the decision up to the Second Circuit – for a reaction and will follow up here at GRELJ as warranted.

A copy of the decision is available for download here.

*Attorney Paul D’Arelli has kindly provided us with a copy of his new e-book, Negotiating Leases in the Era of Green Building: Managing Risk and Merging Expectations in Pursuit of the Deal, to give away here at GRELJ. Just add a comment to this post before 5PM ET next Monday, June 13 and we’ll select one commenter at random to receive a free copy by email.

Negotiating Leases in the Era of Green Building is – as far as I can tell – the first publication of its kind and will be an important addition to your green real estate library. Although a handful of other books – including USGBC’s Green Leasing Guide – have been written about green leases, Mr. D’Arelli places his primary emphasis on discussing risk management as it relates to each step in the green leasing process. The book is written in an accessible voice that will appeal to non-attorneys. But even seasoned real estate practitioners will derive significant benefit from Mr. D’Arelli’s ability to explain the intersection of traditional leasing concepts and green building principles.

Here’s the teaser from the book’s website:

This informative 42-page guide provides a “plain English” presentation of issues and concepts that must be considered by landlords, tenants and their representatives in this new era of sustainability where traditional leasing is intersecting with green building pursuits and requirements.

Rather than attempt to move the industry toward some new model of green leasing – a difficult proposition given the variation in local leasing customs – this guide provides an issue-focused approach that can be used as a basis for informed negotiation geared toward accommodating the needs of the parties regardless of local lease preference.

This conversational guide, while written by an attorney who has been at the forefront of the green legal movement, is fortunately not a legal treatise but an easy read about an increasingly complicated subject.

If you can’t wait to find out the results of our giveway, you can download the book for $15 here. Good luck! And congrats to Paul on a well-written, important piece of work.

Conceived to become the only privately funded LEED Silver-certified space anywhere in the state of Oregon, green building features at the 6-story, mixed-use Elements Building in downtown Corvallis were the subject of a recent proceeding – and written judicial opinion – in Oregon Tax Court.

In CLP Elements LLC v. Benton County Assessor, TC-MD 100662D (May 10, 2011), the owner – and recent purchaser – of the building challenged its real market value as assessed by Oregon’s Benton County. The 6-story building features 3 floors of spa space, 1 floor of office space, and a 2-floor restaurant/bar. Like many commercial properties across the country, the Elements Building lost a tenant during the economic downturn. However, only the office floor was vacant at the time the county assessed the disputed valuation.

But that lone tenant was Hewlett Packard. So the owner’s appraiser made an economic obsolescence adjustment (dropping the building’s value by 52 percent) which the county assessor challenged during the proceeding. The assessor testified that “the subject property was substantially progressed in the process to LEED Silver certification prior to completion of the project, however there is no evidence that the structure has been officially certified.” He also identified the building’s “green roof, efficient energy systems, and re-used materials throughout,” and argued that “those features add value through efficient ventilation and heating and energy savings.” To counter this line of the assessor’s testimony, the owner simply claimed that the building “will never be certified at any level.”

The opinion itself – which is available for download here – is, frankly, not all that interesting in terms of novel green building judicial language. But I do think it’s important to consider that LEED and green building continue to intersect traditional real property issues in novel ways. For example, this is the first reported decision in which a property’s pursuit of LEED certification and supporting green design features were used to buttress an argument that those features make real property worth more. This line of argument is similar to the logic applied by the Appellate Division for the Fourth Department here in New York in Destiny USA Holdings, LLC v. Citigroup Global Markets Realty Corp., 889 N.Y.S.2d 793 (App. Div., 4th Dep’t 2009). There, the Appellate Division required Destiny’s construction lender to continue funding Destiny’s construction loan on the basis that the project’s green financing was “revolutionary” and “unique.” (Of course, that financing is now under scrutiny).

While the handful of written opinions that we have been able to identify to date would hardly make up a new green real estate law hornbook, they are of  import for the green building industry at large.  The benefits of LEED certification and green building generally must always be articulated clearly and objectively. The possibility that they may raise legal issues down the road is a real one that must be considered up front as part of every firm’s overall risk management strategy.

Late Tuesday, Henry Gifford and his attorneys filed their opposition papers to the USGBC’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint in Gifford et al. v. USGBC, the much-ballyhooed lawsuit that is currently pending in the Southern District of New York (Case No. 1:10-CV-07747).

The original return date for the motion was April 21, but the court granted Mr. Gifford an adjournment to May 2, with USGBC’s reply papers due by midnight tomorrow, May 6. The court noted in a separate filing that it will grant no further adjournments on this motion, and it is likely that a decision will not come down for, at the very least, several months after the motion is fully submitted later this week. (Note that, right now, it is unclear whether the court will require oral argument).

As you will recall, the USGBC’s motion to dismiss is based on Rule 12(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and claimed that (1) Mr. Gifford and his fellow plaintiffs lack standing to maintain their suit; and (2) the amended complaint fails to state a cause of action upon which relief can be granted.

Among other things, with respect to this second claim, USGBC’s moving papers argued that Mr. Gifford’s amended complaint fails to “plausibly allege” a Lanham Act claim for false advertising. In addressing the 2008 New Buildings Institute study that is essentially the gravamen of the allegations in the amended complaint, USGBC’s papers argued that “the 2008 [press] release [describing the results of the NBI study, concluding that new LEED-certified buildings are on average performing 25 percent to 30 percent better than non-LEED buildings in terms of energy use] does nothing more than accurately report the conclusion of the NBI study and provide a link to the study itself, so that persons in the building industry could make their own judgments about that study.”

Whether or not those conclusions were misleading will be an interesting question for the Southern District to consider and may ultimately decide the motion. However, Mr. Gifford’s opposition squarely addresses this issue:

[t]he NBI study simply does not support the central premise of the LEED myth, that LEED saves energy. . . . USGBC hails the results of the NBI study far and wide . . . . In truth, the data collected for the 66 page study reveals that LEED buildings use 29 percent more energy. . . . [B]alancing the age of the compared buildings would show that the LEED sample has an average (mean) energy use index of 105,000 BTUs per square foot per year, and the CBECS buildings of the same age had an average (mean) energy use index of 81,600 BTUs per square foot per year. To be anything but intentionally misleading, the Defendant [USGBC] would have to qualify the study thus: “by comparing new LEED buildings to older non-LEED buildings, and by comparing the median average of one dataset to the mean average of another dataset, and by carving out a sample of only 22 percent of all the LEED-certified buildings, we arrived at the conclusion that LEED-certified buildings perform better than non-LEED buildings in terms of energy use.” The Plaintiffs can easily meet their burden of proving the study is not sufficiently reliable to conclude that the Defendant’s LEED-certified buildings save energy.

Opposing Memorandum of Law, at 13.

The NBI study has been a long-standing lightning rod for both proponents and critics of LEED, and my hope is that the Southern District provides some measure of guidance and/or closure on how the study was conducted and its conclusions distributed to the green building community.

Mr. Gifford’s papers also dispute that, in order to have standing under the federal false advertising statute (Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act), it is necessary for a plaintiff to be a competitor of the defendant. They cite to a series of cases that “note that the requirement is not set forth in the text of Section 43(a).” (citing Fashion Boutique of Short Hills, Inc. v. Fendi USA, Inc., 314 F.3d 48, 56-58 (2d Cir. 2002)). “Because Plaintiffs are competitors of USGBC with a very real stake in the market for energy efficient building expertise . . . the USGBC’s assertions are simply incorrect as a matter of law,” Gifford’s attorneys argue. Although USGBC acknowledged in its moving papers that the law in the Second Circuit on this point is not clear, it will be interesting to see how the Southern District handles these arguments – and the ambiguous case law – in its decision.

When reading Mr. Gifford’s papers, I was also reminded that Shari Shapiro questioned the wisdom of USGBC raising the argument in its moving papers that New York’s consumer fraud statutes should be inapplicable to its alleged conduct on the basis that “USGBC’s marketing . . . is directed at businesses and professionals. . . . The mere fact that the USGBC website is publicly accessible does not convert USGBC’s promotion and marketing into ‘consumer-oriented’ conduct.” Moving Memorandum of Law, at 20. At the time, she wrote “it’s pretty clear that the USGBC is marketing directly to consumers, contrary to the Memorandum of Law in support of the USGBC’s Motion to Dismiss.”

Kudos to Ms. Shapiro, because this is exactly what Mr. Gifford’s attorneys argue in their opposition. “If the USGBC website were password protected for professional members only, that assertion would be more convincing,” Mr. Gifford’s attorneys write. “But the USGBC website is aimed at giving the general public an overview of LEED, with ‘What LEED Is’ on the masthead. USGBC’s website explains to the layman consumer: ‘By using less energy, LEED-certified buildings save money for families, business, and taxpayers. . . It’s absurd to think USGBC is not directing its marketing at the tenant-consumer.” Opposing Memorandum of Law, at 14-15.

Finally, Mr. Gifford’s attorneys also acknowledge that the relief sought by the plaintiffs is “primarily injunctive,” and that the relief they “most wish for is full disclosure, compelling USGBC to release actual utility rates in its buildings, in order to foster a healthy marketplace of ideas, as some progressive municipalities have started to require.” Opposing Memorandum of Law, at 16.

We’ll keep an eye out for USGBC’s reply papers and update you accordingly once the motion has been fully submitted for the Southern District’s consideration.

A copy of the opposing memorandum of law is available for download here.

USGBC filed its reply memorandum of law on Friday afternoon, and a copy is available for download here.

Since last month’s Legal Forum at Greenbuild, there have been a number of articles about the increase in “chatter” about the potential for “LEEDigation,” the phrase which my friend and colleague Chris Cheatham coined over at Green Building Law Update some time ago to describe the type of litigation arising out of a project which fails to obtain LEED certification as anticipated. However, as we draw closer to the end of the year, I thought it might be worthwhile to consider why concerns about “LEEDigation” might ultimately be more smoke than fire based on the green building legal experience here in 2010:

• First, the result of the Northland Pines decertification proceeding suggests to me that USGBC/GBCI will never decertify a building once it has achieved LEED certification. As you will recall, in Northland Pines, although it was clear that the high school had failed to satisfy certain LEED prerequisites – grounds for its LEED rating to be revoked by USGBC under LEED for New Construction Version 2.1 – USGBC nevertheless permitted the project team to retroactively amend its documentation and retain its LEED Gold rating. This is the primary reason – in my opinion – why we have yet to see any reported litigation arising out of a project’s failure to earn LEED certification; USGBC/GBCI will work with project teams through its appeals process to ensure that the desired level of LEED certification is achieved and “LEEDigation” never happens.

• Second, many of the private owners who are paying for LEED certification are heavily invested in USGBC as members and participate in LEED’s consensus-based development process; initiating “LEEDigation” would be a black eye for them individually, as well as for their reputation within USGBC itself. Far better to work through a project’s LEED issues collaboratively through the appeals process than to commence a costly and likely protracted litigation. I also thought the following comment from one of Mr. Cheatham’s recent posts at Green Building Law Update was fascinating and worth considering here in the context of “LEEDigation” in public contracting:

“LEED requirements are well established in the federal sector and military because they’ve been in writing for many years. The USACE’s standardized D/B RFP contains clear language going in about the LEED requirements. The scenario [described here] seems like a “LEEDigation” scare tactic. Government contracting officers do not randomly require LEED certification after construction has begun. In fact USACE publishes a list of each project they plan to actually certify in a fiscal year BEFORE that fiscal year has begun. Too bad such scare tactics get lots of attention. By the way, the Navy has had a policy of requiring actual LEED Silver certification of all of their MILCON project (not government validation like the Army and Air Force) for the last three fiscal years and no ‘LEEDigation’ has resulted from it. I find this scenario very unrealistic.”

• Third, and more broadly, I think that the International Green Construction Code, which includes USGBC’s Standard 189P as a compliance path, will become the de facto legislative tool at the state and local levels for green building policymaking. Gone are the halcyon days where municipalities could dole out tax credits and other financial incentives for green buildings; if they choose to address the local-level environmental impacts of buildings, they will do so through amendments to state- and local-level building codes using the IGCC, Standard 189P, or other location-specific initiatives. (We’re seeing this happen already; this fall, Rhode Island became the first state to adopt the IGCC, California has implemented CalGREEN as of January 1, 2010, and New York City’s Green Codes Task Force continues to make recommendations to amend the New York City Building Code.) This is important from a “LEEDigation” perspective because mandates requiring formal LEED certification will soon become an early 21st century legislative novelty.

• Finally, any private sector “LEEDigation” that does arise will be of a posture similar to Gidumal and the Toronto condominium suit (which we have referenced here at GRELJ but not written about): disgruntled purchasers and lessees of real estate in both residential and commercial contexts will use LEED as a sword if owners and landlords fail to properly represent their projects’ green aspirations in offering plans and leases.

Now, is it important to address and allocate the responsibilities for LEED certification in your design and construction agreements? Absolutely, for a host of reasons, but particularly if one party (i.e., the architect or the LEED consultant) has responsibility for coordinating any subsequent appeals to USGBC in order to capture the required level of certification.  However, it’s been over ten years since the LEED program’s inception and we have yet to see a reported litigation arising out of a project’s failure to earn LEED certification. (Again, note that this was not the allegation in the Shaw Development litigation which, incredibly, continues to be referenced incorrectly for this proposition in various quarters).

My question to you during the upcoming holiday break – which I hope you’ll respond to in the comments – is the following: will 2011 prove me wrong or is “LEEDigation” destined to go down as a green building red herring?

Early last week, the Newark (Delaware) City Council postponed a vote on proposed amendments to Newark’s building codes that would require new construction to earn 25 points under either LEED 2009 for New Construction or LEED 2008 for Homes. In addition to the typical green building regulatory concerns relating to costs and red tape which were raised by local designers, builders, and developers, one architect who participated at the City Council session suggested that – as drafted – the ordinance might violate the copyrights which USGBC holds in its various LEED systems. According to the Newark Post, the city’s staff has contacted USGBC and is investigating the issue, and expects resolution at another council meeting shortly.

The first question I asked myself when I saw this story is whether a state or local government enjoys immunity from suits for copyright infringement, which must be brought in federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1498. (Of course, whether USGBC would choose to assert a claim against a government which has allegedly infringed one of its copyrights is a totally different question). Although local governments (towns, cities, counties, etc.) are not immune from suits brought under federal law, the answer is not straightforward with respect to state immunity. (The federal government, on the other hand, has expressly waived its immunity from claims for copyright infringement, though the only available remedy is money damages and not injunctive relief.)

Section 511 of the Copyright Act was adopted by Congress in 1991 in the aftermath of BV Engineering v. University of California at Los Angeles, where UCLA successfully defended a copyright infringement claim on the basis that it enjoyed sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment. 858 F.2d 1394 (9th Cir. 1988). Section 511 states clearly that “[a]ny State . . . shall not be immune, under the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, from suit in Federal court . . . for a violation of any of the exclusive rights of a copyright owner.” 17 U.S.C. § 511. (Just a reminder that the Eleventh Amendment immunizes states from suits for money damages or equitable relief without their consent).

Despite this seemingly clear statutory provision, two Supreme Court cases from the late 1990s suggest that Section 511 might not allow a copyright infringement claim to proceed against a state government. In Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 119 S.Ct. 2219 (1999) (patent) and College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 119 S.Ct. 2199 (1999) (trademark), the Court rejected patent and trademark infringement claims against the state of Florida that were purportedly authorized by similar provisions in the patent and trademark statutes (35 U.S.C. § 271(h) and 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)(2), respectively). Justice Stevens suggested in a footnote in the patent decision that Section 511 might nevertheless receive different treatment, but some brief follow up research did not identify any subsequent cases in this line which confronted the Copyright Act. It is also worth noting that the Court’s holding in both cases was grounded in Congress’s inability to enact statutes that effectively circumvent constitutional protections.

Regardless of where the law currently stands on the interplay between sovereign immunity and Section 511 of the Copyright Act, it’s unclear here exactly how Newark’s proposed amendments could violate USGBC’s copyrights because the text of the proposed amendments does not incorporate any language from the rating systems directly. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting and important consideration for state and local governments that do, in fact, pull relevant sections from third-party rating systems directly into proposed legislation, and a good reminder that a broad range of legal issues exist for policymakers to analyze as they consider and ultimately craft legislation.

In terms of the procedures which both the residents and USGBC/GBCI are obligated to follow in addressing the complaint, the GBCI’s Certification Challenge Policy is important to review. It states, in pertinent part, that “GBCI may revoke previously granted LEED certification or take other action regarding LEED certification such as determine to reduce points or category of LEED certification previously granted, if GBCI determines that credits/prerequisites for LEED certification were granted based on erroneous documentation or falsely submitted documentation. Persons concerned with possible inaccurately granted LEED certification are encouraged to contact the GBCI, provided, however, that GBCI reserves the right to institute an investigation and review of such possible errors or inaccuracy or veracity of documentation without third party complaint.” In the full version of its article (which is not available online), the Vilas County News-Review reports a USGBC official as stating that USGBC “gets challenges from time to time on certification designation” but that the Northland Pines challenge is “off the wall.”

Independent from the technical merits of the complaint – which I am curious to review – the article raises many critical legal questions. First, if the allegations are indeed true, will GBCI exercise its ability to decertify the building? If it does, will the party or parties alleged to be responsible face legal action for those failures? Will the complaint – and any written record created pursuant to the requirements of the Certification Challenge Policy – result in precedent that GBCI will follow in any subsequent decertification proceedings? If so, could Northland Pines become the next Shaw Development, cited as the seminal case for LEED decertification and subsequent green building litigation? If other decertification proceedings take place in jurisdictions where legislation is tied to formal LEED certification, how will state and local governments penalize projects that are decertified (if at all)? Finally, to what extent – if any – will USGBC make decertification materials available to the public for peer review? The Northland Pines proceedings may not answer any of these questions, but because it is the first time a decertification proceeding has been reported publicly, we will be keeping a close eye on what transpires in connection with GBCI’s review of the complaint, a copy of which I am attempting to obtain.

• Citizens Challenge Green Certification of Pines School (VCNR)

Back in August, you may recall that Community Solutions executive director Pat Murphy authored the first piece of a three-part survey titled “LEEDing from Behind: The Rise and Fall of Green Building,” which we noted here at GRELJ. Our article pointing you to the piece generated quite a bit of commentary and, now that Mr. Murphy has completed Parts 2 and 3, we thought we’d point you to his new book compiling the survey which is titled “The Green Tragedy: LEED’s Lost Decade.” The book was released while I was away last month and builds on Part 1 by tracing the historical argument promoting minimal green building cost premiums, reviewing the ongoing marketing efforts behind LEED, and concluding that policy makers should demand energy efficiency standards more akin to the German Passive House rather than “cheap quick ‘green’ solutions.”

Interestingly, in the preface, Murphy observes that “[w]e are now faced with a movement to adopt LEED as part of our building codes. An over-marketed standard that is under serious attack for its poor energy performance is now being proposed and accepted by cities as a requirement for our buildings. The idea of accepting as law an inadequate standard that has been developed by the building industry – thereby allowing that industry to usurp the long-established methodology of setting building standards by government policy- is absurd and dangerous.”

In addition to their significant legal implications, these remarks resonate with the conclusions of the recent NIBS report and, in my opinion, portend the types of critiques I believe we will see more forcefully in 2010 if LEED buildings do not perform at a statistically higher level under Version 3.0. Mr. Murphy’s book is available here, and I look forward to continuing the robust discussion that emerged after we noted Part I here at GRELJ in the comments below.

• The Green Tragedy: LEED’s Lost Decade

The reductions are staggered between 2010 and 2013 and beyond (10 percent through 25 percent, though the benchmark against which those reductions are measured is not set forth in the pending bill); Energy Star ratings would increase from 55 in 2010 to 75 in 2013 and beyond. An independent consultant would determine whether the required energy reduction is met; if not, the contractor (or, interestingly, another entity warranting the energy use) will be responsible for reimbursing the city for the cost of the excess energy use. The amendment is BL2009-503; a vote is slated for later this month. “This would allow an alternative that focuses on the performance of the building, not on the process of how you got to that performance,” Dominy told the Tennessean.

The genesis for the amendment is a 16-classroom addition to Antioch’s middle school, which uses an HVAC and building envelope system that does not qualify for credits under LEED (though it’s unclear exactly why this is the case). The contractor which designed and installed the system- Energy Systems, Inc. of Cookeville, Tennessee- is owned by Bob Southerlan, a former aerospace engineer who is “worried about being knocked out of the Metro construction market.”

I think that this is a critical battle to watch as it may suggest that local governments are coming to view LEED as something less than the mark of building performance; Mr. Dominy’s thoughts about process versus performance are particularly noteworthy in this context. It also echoes some of the remarks in the comments to Pat Murphy’s recent article as presented here at GRELJ (i.e., Mr. Murphy himself noted that “[t]here is a crying need for accurate, verificable and reliable energy rating systems. If LEED doesn’t fill the bill, other options will come forward.”) In addition, if it is true that Southerlan’s system is somehow excluded from the purview of LEED, there may be other, more serious problems with Nashville’s legislation from an antitrust perspective, which we’ll get into in a subsequent article.

• Nashville’s Green Building Code Under Review (Tennessean)

The legislation does not require formal LEED certification, but owners must submit a checklist for the appropriate LEED rating system as part of the plans submittal for a new building permit. Checklists must set forth specific credits the project will pursue, briefly describe how each credit will be achieved, and (interesting to note from a legal perspective) the parties responsible for each credit. The checklist must also be signed by a LEED AP who is not an employee of the building owner at the time of submittal. Again, although certification is not required, in order to obtain a building occupancy permit from the city, at the time of occupancy permit application, project teams must submit a completed checklist indicating which credits the project met successfully, signed by a non-employee LEED AP. As we’ve discussed frequently here at GRELJ, all of these requirements could raise interesting- and novel- liability issues in the event that a project fails to receive a building permit or certificate of occupancy as originally contemplated. However, the city’s development community is calling for Baltimore’s City Council to reconsider the legislation based on perceived additional green building first costs and asking it to propose an incentive-based structure in its place.

According to Don Fry, President and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, the new legislation “inadvertently contradicts the state’s ‘smart growth’ policy by making the counties more economically attractive to new growth and development and by impeding the city’s own efforts to grow and expand its tax base.” Specifically, Mr. Fry pointed to legislation in surrounding Baltimore, Howard, and Carroll counties that offer tax incentives for green projects rather than mandates. “This puts the city, which already has the highest property tax rate in the region, at a further competitive disadvantage,” Fry wrote in a recent op/ed piece. You may recall a similar situation unfolding in King County, Washington and Seattle a couple of years ago.

In addition, developers, many of whom have in recent years have been renovating historical structures in Baltimore’s urban core, are worried that the legislation will make such adaptive reuse projects cost-prohibitive. According to Michael Goodwin of Baltimore-based architects Design Collaborative, Inc., “[t]he reality is that right now, there is still an unknown premium to doing something green. . . . The premium, which is 4 or 8 to 12 percent on a green project, you can justify it if it’s a build and hold type of company, and in the boom we’ve been experiencing in the last four or six years, there haven’t been a lot of those.” From an engineering perspective, developers are also worried about the feasibility of simultaneously preserving historic building walls which contain glazing that will need to be upgraded in order to address LEED’s energy and atmosphere credits.

One other thought from Mr. Fry also rings salient in the context of green building policymaking: “[f]or any new policy such as this to succeed, two key things must happen. First the policy must be well-designed to achieve its intended outcome. Second, it must be well communicated to those impacted by it. Neither appears to be the case with Baltimore city’s new ‘green building’ measure.” Here, Mr. Fry is referring to the fact that the Baltimore-specific Green Building Standards that will serve as the “equivalent” to LEED have yet to be fully developed, and will not be released until the end of this year. Moreover, I would also note that, as drafted, Council Bill 07-0602 fails to include language providing for project teams to appeal a decision of the building department not to award a certificate of occupancy or building permit based on the required LEED checklists, nor does it include any sunset provision that allows the city to review the legislation’s impact and effect after a certain period of time.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard industry voice opposition to LEED-driven legislation, and the Baltimore mandate may suggest- particularly as stimulus dollars continue to flow to state and local governments to craft similar pieces of legislation, and economic conditions improve and boost construction starts- similar concerns could be raised once again in other parts of the country as well.

• Baltimore’s Green Building Standards Well-Intentioned But Flawed (GBC)
• Developers Worry About City’s New Law (TDR)
• Council Bill 07-062
• San Francisco Ordinance is “LEED on Acid” (GRELJ)

However, I think it’s important to look at the specific language that provides for decertification in LEED 2009, which reads (in part) as follows: “certification may be revoked from any LEED project upon gaining knowledge of non-compliance with any applicable MPR.” (emphasis added). The way I read this language, USGBC/GBCI is not obligated to revoke certification upon learning of non-compliance, but it is not restricted from receiving information regarding non-compliance from any third party. The question then becomes what, if any, obligations USGBC/GBCI may have to use that information and pursue a decertification proceeding, either conferred elsewhere in the LEED rating system itself or otherwise imposed by law. I don’t know the answer to that question, but perhaps Ujjval or others could chime in below in the comments. I think this is an absolutely critical point to dissect.

Also of import in the ENR article with respect to the MPR requiring access to building performance data (which has been the MPR driving much of the risk discussion here at GRELJ and elswhere), Duane Morris construction attorney Ed Gentilcore emphasizes that “[w]hat was once an initial project-performance milestone now has ongoing tail responsibilities that could create extended obligations for the owner itself and possibly, in turn, design and construction teams.” In addition, Scot Horst told ENR in the same article that the organization is “still developing the best and easiest ways to help owners do this. This is a new requirement and there is a lot to work out over time.” He declined to tell ENR when any addenda to the MPRs might be released.

I think it’s clear that the contract challenges and corresponding risks associated with the new LEED 2009 MPRs are just begin to emerge, particularly if USGBC and GBCI release a second addenda to a document that was just released a few months ago.

• Building Rating System Requirement Raises Concerns (ENR)