Candelas Awarded Prestigious LEED® Gold Certification
As further real-world proof of its commitment to sustainable development, the Colorado master-planned community of Candelas has been awarded LEED® Gold certification for its newest Swim & Fitness Club, a state-of-the-art recreation center in the community’s ParkView residential village. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), is the foremost program for buildings, homes and communities that are designed, constructed, maintained and operated for improved environmental and human health performance.
“The Candelas community’s LEED certification demonstrates tremendous green building leadership,” said Mahesh Ramanujam, president and CEO, USGBC. “LEED was created to make the world a better place and revolutionize the built environment by providing everyone with a healthy, green and high performing buildings. Candelas serves as a prime example of how the work of innovative building projects can use local solutions to make a global impact on the environment.”
“We’re obviously very proud of the fact that our newest Swim & Fitness Club was recognized with the USGBC’s highest honor,” said Creig Veldhuizen, Candelas’ Vice President of Marketing and Finance. “It’s a rare distinction for a new-home community to garner LEED Gold certification, but it simply underscores our unwavering dedication to be one of Colorado’s premier green living communities and help residents leave a lighter carbon footprint.”
The latest Swim & Fitness Club at Candelas—situated within the community’s residential village of ParkView—is an innovative, solar-powered recreation center that has been designed and built with an all-out commitment to green building best practices. For example, the recreation center is 60 percent more energy efficient than comparable buildings, features water-efficient fixtures that achieve over 50 percent water savings, and more than 20 percent of materials, by cost, were sourced from within 500 miles—with over 10 percent of materials’ value coming from recycled content.
LEED is the foremost program for the design, construction and operation of green buildings. More than 90,100 commercial and institutional projects are currently participating in LEED, comprising more than 17.1 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states and more than 164 countries and territories.
