Vision goes LEED!

Many people think that the new Hotel Indigo in downtown Athens is the classic city's first LEED certified building.  This new building trend is governed by the  U.S. Green Building Council and is a certification based on  "providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO₂ emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts."
 There are four levels , certified, silver, gold, and platinum, that are determined by the number of points for each of the categories such as site selection and materials.
There are 7 LEED certified buildings currently in Athens of which five are government buildings. In 2004 Athens created a new "sustainable building" policy requiring new governmental buildings to be up for LEED certification. This includes several  police substations and fire stations and the family protection center. 

It wasn't until Hotel Indigo  came into town and achieved the hard to get Gold status did people start talking.
University of Georgia has their little LEED certified baby in the Tate II expansion but only because students campaigned and raised the money for it's certification. There are no immediate plans for another LEED certified building on UGA"s campus. 
The first LEED certified house is currently being built off Pulaski St. by Bork Architectural Design. Vision Landscaping is excited to be doing the landscaping and hardscape installtion. We are looking forward to working with more projects like this in the future.