us green building council: CityCenter Las Vegas earns LEED certifications - 09/15/09 06:17 AM
MGM Mirage's CityCenter project going up right on the Las Vegas Strip received some very good news from the U.S. Green Building Council. The mammoth upscale undertaking won't open until December, but an otherwise tough year for the gaming firm is finally showing a peek of the sunny side of things as finishing touches are being applied there.
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, gold certification for the development it has sought from the onset has been granted for some of the components, including the non-gaming condominium and hotel tower Vdara. Receiving the same is the 4,000-room hotel Aria … (8 comments)

us green building council: Green building to the rescue - 07/01/08 03:43 PM
A lot of exhaustive debate is going on around the country about how to start resolving our worsening energy crisis. Well, that's good. In reality, though, this same topic has been discussed in U.S. Congress, college campuses, energy conventions, just about everywhere really, for a couple of decades now and nothing concrete has been done about it. Talk is cheap, meaningful action is what the nation needs.
Help is on the way, although on a small scale at this point. The housing industry has taken some steps in the right direction to make homes more energy-efficient. One of the bright stars … (6 comments)

us green building council: CityCenter resort finally gets a name - 05/22/08 03:32 PM
 MGM Mirage's CityCenter is currently regarded as the biggest privately-financed real estate project in the U.S. It consists of many components large and small, okay mostly large, and they each have been given names long ago. Except one. And it happens to be the main attraction of the entire development sitting on Las Vegas Boulevard.
 The showpiece hotel with over 4,000 rooms housed in two glass towers and a 150,000 square foot casino to keep the patrons busy has jealously managed to guard its future name from the curious, but now the cat is out of the bag. Its official name … (3 comments)

us green building council: The Palazzo Las Vegas is LEED - 04/14/08 11:57 AM
The Palazzo resort, a recently-opened Las Vegas Sands creation on the Strip, is much more than a deluxe all-suite hotel tower, large casino, upscale shops and several gourmet dining spots under one roof. A few know that it is also in the forefront of eco-friendly design not only in town but also internationally.
The U.S. Green Building Council just labeled it the largest LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certified building in the whole world. It earned the institute's silver certificate with its energy-saving design, construction and everyday technologies. To incorporate all that into a 50-story structure with 3,000 … (4 comments)

us green building council: Green building product awards, part II - 07/06/07 04:31 PM
Nearly a month ago I wrote a blog about a few products the BuildingGreen, Inc. gave awards for at a U.S. Green Building Council's conference last winter. This is a follow-up to that post, highlighting three more inventions that earned recognition during the convention and merit a discussion here.
Delta Faucet Co. has manufactured a showerhead that is about to revolutionize the splashy function of getting cleaned up under a stream of water. It uses only 1.6 gallons of water per minute because of a process called   H2Okinetic Technology which generates droplets that are rather big, yielding solid heat retention and body wetting. Kind of … (5 comments)

us green building council: Nevada green building setback - 05/03/07 07:47 AM
Just two years ago Nevada elevated itself to the national forefront of green housing legislation. It enacted a much-admired law that offered businesses 30 to 50 percent tax reduction for up to 10 years for constructing environmentally sound buildings. Now the law has been suspended. And we are asking, why? The answer is very common. The state faces fiscal problems.
According to the Nevada Commission on Economic Development, a host of businesses have applied for the tax breaks. Some of the heavy hitters among them are the MGM Mirage CityCenter project and the Echelon Place development, both on the Strip. CityCenter, by the … (3 comments)

us green building council: U.S. Green Building Council's new program - 05/02/07 05:46 AM
The new initiative is called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhoods, or LEED-ND. It's actually the first time the Council is working on a program with outside participants, who in this case are the Congress for the New Urbanism and the National Resources Defense. There is something else new. For the first time the LEED certification system steps away from individual buildings and concentrates instead on sustainable land use and transportation.
While the original LEED has a primary emphasis on energy efficiency and green building materials, the ND deals with sustainable site selection. And what really led to the birth … (6 comments)

us green building council: Housing sector key in energy conservation. - 04/25/07 09:46 AM
UNEP, United Nations Environment Program, sponsors the Sustainable Building and Construction Initiative, or SBCI, that recently issued an eye-opening report about global warming and what role the building industry plays in it. The sector alone accounts for 30-40% of global energy use, a significant amount. It should also be mentioned that the U.S. Green Building Council is a strong supporter of SBCI, so we're closely working with the international community to address the deteriorating situation.
Most energy is consumed during the use of the structures, that is houses, condominium towers, townhouses, office buildings, plants, for cooling, heating, ventilation, lighting and some other applications, and not during … (8 comments)

us green building council: Vegas high-rise condos seek LEED certification. - 04/07/07 10:08 AM
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It's a Green Building Rating System designed by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nationally recognized benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. Okay, that very official-sounding part is out of the way now. For more specifics from the Council, click here.
MGM Mirage's CityCenter project is seeking LEED certification for the mammoth mixed-use, including condominiums, construction undertaking on the Strip. Let's look at a few of the highlights they hope will earn them that designation. Some of the polished wood accents actually come from old barns across the rural U.S. Carpeting is mostly made from recycled … (1 comments)