Building owners and parking operators rethinking parking structure design and operation to support more sustainable mobility
WASHINGTON, D.C. – (November 9, 2018) – Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) announced that Parksmart has reached a milestone of 100 registered parking structures. These parking facilities are located across seven countries and 22 U.S. states accounting for more than 137,000 parking spaces. As a registered project, the parking facilities are currently pursuing Parksmart certification. Parksmart works with businesses, cities and communities to develop parking structures that encourage more sustainability mobility, reduces the structure’s impact on the environment and improves access to places. The 100th project to register was St. Armands Parking Garage in Sarasota, Florida.
Parksmart is a performance-based certification that recognizes new and existing parking garages for smarter, more sustainable siting, design and operations. It provides property owners with a framework to build higher performing parking facilities that better serve the environment, customers and improve access to places people want to be. Registered projects are pursuing certification utilizing green building strategies that help reduce costs, encourage alternative modes of transportation, reduce CO2 emissions and conserve resources.
“Our mobility networks are shifting and it’s drastically changing the way we move around our cities and neighborhoods,” said Paul Wessel, director for Parksmart. “Registered Parksmart projects are committed to pursuing certification and are reimagining the role parking structures can play in helping us transition to a more sustainable mobility network.”
Parksmart has certified 24 garages in the U.S., Canada, China and Serbia and serves all space types including universities, airports, commercial office buildings, parks, sporting venues and more. Certified parking facilities encourage alternate modes of transportation like biking, walking, or public transit; reduce idling time and emissions in parking garages; increase access to electric vehicle charging stations; and reduce energy consumption through improved lighting and ventilation systems.
Building owners and managers interested in Parksmart can download the Owner’s Checklist to get started with the certification process. To help teams learn more about certification, Parksmart is leading an education session at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo on Thursday, November 15. The session will explore how parking structures have found triple bottom line benefits through certification. Greenbuild is the world’s largest green building conference and expo and is taking place in Chicago Nov. 14-16.
What Parksmart-certified projects are saying:
“The value to Cal Poly Pomona is unmeasurable. The number of Faculty and Students that join the University because we strive to make our University’s built environment less impactful on our existing stretched resources while still providing the best level of service is limitless. A stronger Faculty and enrollment requests help make us one of the leading Universities in the nation. We will continue to strive and set a positive influence upon others in our industry.”
— Bruyn Bevans, LEED AP, Senior Project Manager, Facilities, Planning, Design & Construction, Cal Poly Pomona
“Triple Bottom Line (TBL) helps optimize and align economic, environmental, and social performance. Investors and decision-makers can use the TBL Tool to configure development investments for maximum returns and prioritize initiatives that are also aligned with TBL goals. WE PARK aims to make substantial redesigns and improvements to existing parking facilities to position car park as the “Second lobby”. We improve the customer experience not only based on overall look and feel but also reduce our operating costs by a series modernization measures, such as our national central control room, intelligent barrier system, LED lighting, auto payment system, CCTV cameras, smart signage, car park navigation system, etc.”
— Mark Cho, Senior Partner and CEO China at LimeTree Capital Partners
“There’s definitely a ripple effect to this. I tell people about green garages, and they look at me like, ‘Green garages? Really? What are you talking about?’ Then I go into it. They’re like, ‘Oh, wow.’ You put hands free readers in garages, so it speeds up the egress process. There’s less emissions and stuff like that. These are things that you may or may not be doing now. When you go to purchase new equipment, why not look into it?”
— Tim Hoppenrath, Impark, Parking Manager for Brookfield Sliver Spring Metro, DC Metro-area