Conference, workshops celebrate Portland's green Spaces

Next week's weather forecast calls for still more gray skies, but Portland designers can expect to see a lot of green when the second Spaces conference hits town.

The one-day conference, slated for Jan. 26 at downtown's World Trade Center, is intended to serve as both a crash course in sustainability and an opportunity to expand horizons for those already designing green.

Full-day conferences that immerse attendants in green building strategies are the norm in Seattle and throughout the Northeast, said Elaine Aye, a Spaces co-chairwoman and principal with the consulting firm Green Building Services.

But despite a plethora of green buildings, Aye said, Portland rarely plays host to such events because it lacks the population of the Emerald City or the metropolises back east.

To have this in our own region - is unusual, Aye said.

Spaces presentations will be divided into three tracks - building systems, sustainable design and leadership - and attendees can attend up to six sessions per track, with leaders from Portland's architectural, interior design, engineering and consulting firms helming the sessions.

Workshops highlight LEED-CI, LEED-EB

Piggybacking on and preceding the conference are two workshops - one scheduled for Jan. 25, the other Jan. 27 - celebrating LEED-CI and LEED-EB, respectively.

LEED-NC, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for New Construction, has since 2000 been the rating system of choice among design professionals.

But since the U.S. Green Building Council unveiled LEED for Commercial Interiors and LEED for Extended Buildings in 2004, building owners and retail tenants have slowly embraced the new systems.

For both LEED-EB and LEED-CI, they've caught on a bit slower than (LEED for) New Construction, Aye said. But we've been seeing a lot of opportunity and interest in pursuing them. The city of Portland is requiring at this point that EB be a standard for its existing buildings, and with CI, we're seeing retail clients that are showing some interest.

A green renovation earned the Oregon Convention Center in Portland's Lloyd District a LEED-EB certification in 2004; the owners of downtown's 200 Market Building will learn in February whether their renovation passes muster with the USGBC.

LEED-CI has caught on at about the same pace.

The architectural firm SERA and the Portland arm of the consulting engineering firm Glumac are expecting LEED-CI certifications for their office spaces. And a Pearl District Wells Fargo branch will learn soon whether its $500,000 renovation, designed by Bainbridge Design with aid from Green Building Services, was worthy of an expected gold rating.

Tenants are getting more interested, Aye said. Part of it is lack of education - how do you do it and make it affordable for your client and so forth. That's what this conference and workshops are for. We've got the people who are applying sustainability in the marketplace.

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