Burns Presents on Integration of LEED and HTCs at National Conference
March 8, 2010
As the Director of Historic Architecture at Commonwealth Architects, Bob Burns, AIA, LEED AP, knows a thing or two about the intersection of historic rehabilitation and sustainable design. Burns recently took his knowledge and experience gained from historic investment tax credit projects to Washington, DC, where he participated as a panelist on "The Nuts and Bolts of Integrating LEED and Historic Tax Credits" at the 2010 National Historic Tax Credit Conference on March 4.
His presentation addressed how a small rehabilitation project on West Washington Street in Suffolk, VA, can make a big contribution to green practices that pass muster with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation. The historic tax credit project has been designed to achieve LEED-Silver certification and is a contributing resource to the federal and state Suffolk Historic District.
"The idea that energy efficiency and LEED certification are only for large projects misses the main point that sustainability should be pursued to some degree for all projects regardless of size. On the West Washington Street project we were able to take a small budget and push it a long way. By using an integrated design approach, we were able to take advantage of credits that are inherent to the nature of the adaptive reuse project in an historic downtown, as well as some innovative energy efficiency strategies, to produce an efficient and sensible solution," said Burns.
The National Historic Tax Credit Conference marks the only time this year that all HTC stakeholders -developers, investors, lenders, state and local officials, architects, attorneys and accountants - will assemble to learn and network. Burns served as one of many expert panelists who shed light on how to integrate LEED and historic investment tax credits, how to understand the opportunities and incentives in utilizing green building principles in historic redevelopments and how to position HTC projects for the economic recovery.
