As a result of this partnership, 350 West Mart Center earned the prestigious 2009 Green Development of the Year award from the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP's) Chicago Chapter Annual Awards for Excellence Program. The co-located Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza also earned the distinction of being the first LEED certified hotel in the City of Chicago and the largest LEED Gold certified hotel in North America.
350 West Mart Center was built in 1977 and is located across the street from the Merchandise Mart, connected by a pedestrian bridge. The building features a 25-story mixed use tower encompassing 2.2 million square feet, including the separately-managed 521-room Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza located on floors 14-25 and 1.75 million square feet of commercial space and a professional conference center. 350 West Mart Center is also home to a prestigious roster of nationally known businesses such as AT&T, Ogilvy and Mather, Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago, Fiserv, Upshot, RCN Cable Networks, Comcast SportsNet Chicago and a wholesale apparel mart.
With such a large number of tenants, building uses, and floor area, the LEED certification process at 350 West Mart Center was a challenging and inspired endeavor by a diverse and hard-working team that included Merchandise Mart Properties, the Delta Institute and EnVise, LLC. The Mart Plaza’s separate corporate governance, facility management, building systems, and clientele proved to be an especially interesting challenge within a challenge, requiring meticulous project management and execution to successfully complete two separate sets of analyses, improvements, and documentation. Ultimately, the success of 350 West Mart Center’s LEED certification shows that large, multi-tenant, multi-use buildings can meet rigorous LEED benchmarks, and in doing so they can make a big impact on the environment, their tenants, and their communities.
Key environmental achievements and metrics resulting from Delta’s involvement in the Mart Plaza’s LEED certification process include:
- Reduction in annual electric energy consumption of 4.9 million kWh, enough to meet the electric needs of 500 homes for a year.
- Installation of permanent CO2 monitors in all 54 air handlers, including the commercial areas and the Holiday Inn, allowing for better monitoring and control of outdoor air volumes to maintain optimized indoor air quality.
- Development of a comprehensive Commissioning Plan to be used to drive continuous improvement that will ensure that the facility maintains and improves its high level of energy efficiency.
- Installation of solar film on many of the windows at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza, used to reduce heat gain and thus reduce air conditioning load on the building. The solar film will also create a better thermal climate in many areas of the hotel.
- Sustainable purchasing in the categories of furniture (48% by cost) and facility alterations & additions (60% by cost).
- Water use reduction of 2.4 million gallons annually over the LEED baseline scenario, enough to do 60,000 loads of laundry.
- Alternative commuting transportation rate of 86%, saving approximately 1 million gallons of gasoline annually, equivalent to over 20 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.
- Creation of the Green Forum program, in which building management offers 2 free full-service space rental occasions in the Merchandise Mart Conference Center (located in the walkway between 350 West Mart Center and the Merchandise Mart) to sustainability-related organization, with first priority to nonprofit organizations.
