Higher Education Facilities

Seven Trends Shaping Student Housing

1. New financing schemes address rapid growth
2. Mixed-use energizes neighborhood vitality
3. Common areas must serve multiple purposes
4. Sustainability becomes a teaching tool
5. Prefab bathrooms show up on the radar
6. 'Greek villages' make a comeback
7. Residential college system gains more adherents.

Today's college students wouldn't think of sharing a bathroom with a whole floor of cohorts.  They expect flat panel TV's, cable, and high-speed Internet access everywhere-for both academic and social reasons-along with comfortable nooks and crannies in which to gather and study.  These amenities may seem excessive to their bill-paying parents, but university officials say they're competing fiercly for top student talent, so they're giving customers what they want. 

Building teams invested in programming, designing, and constructing collegiate residential facilities would do well to consider several trends that are influencing activities in this sector:

• Alternative financing
• Mixed use/urban refill
• Innovative flexible common spaces
• Sustainability as a lifetime learning tool

New university housing feeds students' environmental awareness and makes it easier for them to follow through with good ecological practices.  Smart Building Teams can be equally motivated to use their skills and experience toward creating efficient, affordable residence facilities for today's university scholars.

Making the Business Case for Green Buildings- Top 10 Reasons!

Why Commercial Building OWNERS Choose Green:

1. Green buildings are a competitive differentiator: Green buildings lower operating costs and better indoor environmental quality are more attractive to a growing group of corporate, public and individual buyers' decisions about purchasing properties and homes.
2. Green buildings help mitigate risk: green building certification can provide some measure of protection against future lawsuits through third party verification of measures installed to protect indoor air quality, beyond just meeting code-required minimums.  Green buildings tend to be easier to rent & sell, because educated tenants increasingly understand their benefits. 
3. Green buildings attract tenants: Today's savvier tenants understand and are looking for the benefits that green building space have to offer.  The new Class A office space is green; lease-up rates for green buildings typically range from average to 20 percent above average. 
4. Green buildings are cost-effective: The cost per square foot for buildings seeking LEED certification falls into the exisitng range of costs for buildings not seeking LEED certification.  An upfront investment of 2% in green building design, on average, results in life cycle savings of 20% of the total construction costs-more than 10 times the initial investment.
5. Green buildings can increase rental rates: a 2008 CoStar Group study found that green buildings outperform their non-green peer assets in key areas such as occupancy, sale prices and rental rates-sometimes by wide margins. 

Why Commercial Building TENANTS Choose Green:

1. Green buildings mean happier employees anc occupants: green buildings are designed to have healthier, cleaner indoor environments, which mean health benefits for occupants. 
2. Green buildings reap public relations and community benefits; being a good neighbor is good not just for building users, but for the larger community.  Green buildings fit right in with this message. 
3. Green buildings can have lower operating costs: green buildings typically cost less top operate and maintain.  There are also tax benefits and incentives available for green buildings and green building strategies.
4. Green buildings provide immediate and measurable results: benchmarking energy and water use is a critical tactic that is saving companies millions of dollars, year over year, simply by reducing costs through saved energy,w ater and other resources. 
5. Green buildings save energy: Reducing energy consumption has gone from being a "good idea" to a business necessity.  It's not just that energy conservation has a positive life-cycle cost impact, but also that it offers a direct reduction in an organization's carbon footprint. 

Find testimonials, facts and statistics to help you make the case for green buildings! Usgbc.org/business