LEED Platinum on a Tight Budget for a Forward‑Thinking Community College
Center for Global Learning
When the original design for this modern education building aimed for a LEED Silver rating, Hoffman saw opportunites to add significant value for a fast-growing institution. With creative preconstruction planning and mindful construction practices, we added enough sustainable features to achieve LEED Platinum. As the newest community college in Washington, Cascadia has quickly built a national reputation for its high transfer rate and innovative approach to student-centered learning.
The Center for Global Learning is a three-story, 54,000 SF building that includes classrooms, art studios, administrative space and a multi-purpose room with advanced high-tech presentation capabilities. Hoffman helped the project achieve LEED Platinum status by carefully aligning the scope and budget during preconstruction, and then capturing savings in the bid phase that allowed the college to add back in several alternates, such a new data center to support a new classroom building. LEED points also came via careful tree preservation on the wooded campus, a major priority for the college. Hoffman used hand excavation for parts of the foundation and worked with an arborist to establish barriers and protocols to guard the trees during construction.
