The U.S. Bancorp Tower, Portland’s largest building, has earned a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum rating – the highest level of recognition from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Owner Unico Properties has continuously updated “Big Pink,” as the building is also known, since it attained LEED silver status in 2009.

“It’s been a decade-long effort,” said Brett Phillips, Unico’s vice president of sustainable and responsible investments.

Improvements included an elevator modernization – including a destination dispatch system that groups people together, resulting in fewer trips and reduced energy usage.

Unico also optimized the building’s boilers, allowing one of the two to remain turned off on most days. Natural gas usage has been “basically cut in half,” Phillips said.

The building, which was completed in 1983, has updated heating and cooling and LED lighting throughout. Data analytics allow building managers to adjust systems in real time and spot problems immediately, Phillips said.

Kimberly Lewis, a U.S. Green Building Council senior vice president, praised Unico for moving forward. Of 80 LEED platinum buildings in Portland, “very few have gone for recertification” under LEED version 4.1, the latest set of guidelines, Lewis said Wednesday at an event to mark the achievement. LEED standards are updated periodically to raise the bar.

The U.S. Bancorp Tower has approximately 1.2 million square feet of commercial space on 42 floors. It’s Portland’s largest building by area, and the second-tallest, behind only the Wells Fargo Tower.

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The notion of equity in design can have many different meanings.

For instance, the U.S. Green Building Council in 2013 introduced Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design social equity pilot credits. They address equity within the project team, equity in the community around a project and equity within the project supply chain. However…

“When folks questioned us about the human impact we found it was missing the people side of the framework,” said Kimberly Lewis, U.S. Green Building Council senior vice president for market transformation and development.

Six years later, the LEED social equity credits remain a work in progress. But Lewis believes the design community can do more to move the needle.

“We struggle with amplifying the message,” she told attendees at a panel discussion Tuesday at the Center for Architecture in Portland. “Our heart and our mission are as powerful as we want, and it’s a great social justice message. But to the people on the street all things are local, and engaging vulnerable communities is not easy. Trust takes time, and we have a responsibility to shift the conversation. It’s us – even here.”

The discussion was part of Portland’s second annual Sustainable Building Week, a weeklong event dedicated to sustainable design and construction.

Equity has to do with access and empowerment, said panelist Elaine Aye, a regional manager with RWDI Consulting Engineers and Scientists. A good example, she added, is the .

Created in 2009 by Prosper Portland (the Portland Development Commission at the time), the Lloyd EcoDistrict uses public money to prioritize projects and programs that address transportation, water, energy, waste and education. It’s all in the name of prosperity, environmental quality and social welfare.

It’s a unique framework for sustainable development that has seen its share of success, Aye said. She pointed to an effort to retrofit buildings with LED lighting as one example.

“The value of a framework is it creates a path for an individual, an organization, a building type,” she said. “We had two listening sessions in the community and it was fantastic. We asked about resiliency and climate change, and it’s diverse. It impacts everyone differently.”

The key point, Aye said, is that the discussion involved the community and not merely a project team.

“In the world of an eco-district it is the essential elements that have to be done,” she said. “There are resiliency, equity and sustainability; those are the essentials, and we have to address them systematically – not at the building level, but at the society level or at the city level.”

Money for such initiatives is always an issue, said panelist Dave Otte, partner and development director at Holst Architecture.

But Aye said the issues at hand go beyond mere funding. It’s also a matter of listening to the wider community before making critical design choices.

“I think we scale it up by having conversation, by listening and observing what’s in our communities and finding the touch points where we can effect change,” she said.

Panelist Afton Walsh, community outreach director for Walsh Construction, agreed and pointed to the passage last year of Metro‘s $652 million affordable housing bond measure as an example.

“If you live in the metro area, you passed a monumental affordable housing bill last November,” she said. “On top of the city of Portland bond from 2016 the community has really stepped up, and we need to now fix this. Implementation obviously is just getting under way, and that will be the real scorecard.”

To build equitably, Walsh said, means using new and more efficient materials to advance energy performance, indoor air quality and other areas.

But those are the places where developers often look to save money, Otte noted. That is particularly true with affordable housing projects, he added, especially those constructed with the expectation of profits from the sale of the building.

“The bond is a great step, but frankly we’re playing catch-up – and in some ways we’re going in the wrong direction,” he said. “There’s something to be said for a long-term investment in housing, and sometimes we lose sight of the fact these buildings will be around for 60 years, so much of it is based on the cost per unit and not based on the quality per unit.”

Otte added that he hopes this does not come back to bite public housing authorities in coming years when they make use of Metro bond dollars.

“Housing is not just a human right; it’s also health care,” he said. “So investment in housing will pay off in ways we don’t even understand yet. Look at the long-term benefits from an energy and social justice perspective, because every project out there will still have a (financial) gap; every project will struggle to find a way to get built. It’s a stop-gap and it is going to take everyone working hard together and having the conviction and drive to make it happen.”

Otte noted that designers and builders are in a strong position to guide the conversation.

“We are the trusted agents in society, more than politicians and policy makers,” he said. “People will listen to us, and that’s an exciting opportunity. It’s in this discomfort that we’re going to be able to move the needle. That’s where design gets exciting, is in that discomfort.”

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Researchers earlier this year found that carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere reached their highest recorded levels ever at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

Such findings help explain in part why the U.S. Green Building Council and the New Buildings Institute announced recently that they signed in Seattle a memorandum of understanding to work together to advance the cause of constructing net-zero energy buildings. The document defines how that cooperation will work to improve building professionals’ capabilities to deliver net-zero energy and zero-emissions projects, as well as projects optimized for energy grid interactions. These efforts are also intended to increase the number of completed zero-energy, zero-emissions and LEED Zero-certified buildings.

The document also aims to extend adoption of stretch energy codes around the United States, improve code compliance and enforcement, and enhance social equity, public health and resilience. Finally, the two entities also want to communicate those achievements and goals through various educational, social media and other platforms.

“USGBC and NBI missions are closely aligned, which is reflected in our collective efforts to advance zero-energy buildings and support grid integration over the past five years,” USGBC President and CEO Mahesh Ramanujam stated in a press release. “We believe that net zero is a powerful target that will move the entire industry forward.”

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The team behind the water-management system at Hassalo on Eighth will deliver a presentation on their experience at a national green-building conference.

The system at Hassalo on Eighth is the largest of its type in the United States, said Vanessa Keitges, president and CEO of Columbia Green Technologies. The Portland company is responsible for the development’s green roofs.

Keitges will join Wade Lange, vice president and regional manager for developer American Assets Trust; Kyle Andersen, principal at GBD Architects; and Thomas Puttman, president and CEO of Puttman Infrastructure Inc. in Portland, to discuss the project. The group will be featured speakers at Greenbuild, the world’s largest green-building conference, on Nov. 7 in Boston.

Hassalo on Eighth, a massive mixed-use development in Portland’s Lloyd District, in September was named the national LEED Homes project of the year by the U.S. Green Building Council. The development features green roofs, stormwater planters, green streets, rainwater harvesting and on-site wastewater recycling.

Developers and planners are looking for ways to mitigate flooding, Keitges said.

“The movement across the country is how can cities and developers manage the flooding, because the flooding is causing all the problems,” she said.

Columbia Green Technologies rooftop systems can absorb 80 percent of the stormwater that hits a rooftop, Keitges said. The systems cost $15 to $20 per square foot to install, she said.

American Assets Trust earned a significant reduction in its system development charges – from an estimated $3 million to just $1.4 million – for not using the city’s wastewater infrastructure, Keitges said.

Columbia Green Technologies recently installed green roofs at Nike’s campus in Washington County, Portland State University’s business school and a downtown hotel, among other locations.

Hassalo on Eighth, completed in 2015, has 657 apartments in three buildings. As of Sept. 30, units were 93 percent leased with an average monthly rent of $1,671, according to a federal securities filing.

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Hassalo on Eighth, a mixed-use project in the Lloyd District that was developed by American Assets Trust, was named the LEED Homes project of the year by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The development, completed in 2015, has 657 apartments in three buildings centered on an outdoor plaza. It was designed by GBD Architects. Turner Construction served as general contractor.

The USGBC, in an announcement Tuesday, said the building features that separated Hassalo on Eighth from the competition include rainwater harvesting and treatment, on-site wastewater treatment and reuse with infiltration, district energy, use of natural light and access to public transportation.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the most popular green-building certification program in the U.S.

Each of Hassalo on Eighth’s three buildings individually has a LEED platinum rating. The developer is also pursuing platinum status as a neighborhood development, said Wade Lange, American Assets Trust’s vice president and regional manager.

Building to LEED standards was no more expensive than otherwise, Lange said.

“It worked out cost-effective for us to do it,” he said. “But more than that, in Portland LEED platinum makes you competitive in the market. LEED certification of some kind is almost necessary, and with LEED platinum, we wanted to differentiate ourselves in the market.”

Hassalo on Eighth was approximately 90 percent leased with average rents of unit of $1,665 as of June 30, according to a securities filing. American Assets Trust, based in San Diego, is traded publicly.

Hassalo on Eighth was the only project in Oregon to be honored. Portland-based developers Gerding Edlen and Urban Development + Partners were named LEED Homes Power Builders; the designation is given to developers that have consistently produced LEED-rated buildings.

American Assets Trust is working to finalize a design for Oregon Square, a large office development in Northeast Portland.

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The 15-story Commonwealth Building, constructed in downtown Portland in 1948, has sold for $69 million.

The 216,099-square-foot building was purchased by KBS Capital Advisors, a Newport Beach, California-based affiliate of KBS Growth & Income Real Estate Investment Trust, according to a news release. Financing came in the form of a $47.4 million, five-year floating rate acquisition loan from an insurance company. The loan was arranged by HFF, which also marketed the property.

The seller was Unico Properties, a limited liability company. The property previously sold for $41 million in 2013 and $27.7 million in 2007.

The latest sale equates to $319 per square foot.

Pietro Belluschi, a notable Portland architect who died in 1994, designed the building at 421 S.W. Sixth Ave.

The Commonwealth Building was remodeled between 2013 and 2015 into creative office space. The building fronts the Sixth Avenue transit mall, and includes flexible office space, a fitness center and basement bicycle storage.

Tenants include Quantum Spatial, Kennedy Jenks, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance and Galois Inc.

The building has a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. Originally named the Equitable Building, it is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The sale comes amid a backdrop of strong demand for office space in Portland. Class A office space had average asking rents of $31.33 during the second quarter, and a total vacancy rate of 7.8 percent, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

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