Green Scene

BY PHIL HAGEN

The Springs Preserve

Sin City, of All Places, Is About to LEED by Example

The Las Vegas strip comes off as absurd in just about any juxtaposition you could imagine. But from this vantage point, in the midst of a patch of desert that marks the city's birthplace as a literal oasis, a new standard in polar opposites is near completion.

Just three miles west of the world's leading icon of excess, where imagining the utility bill has always been part of the fun, the city is quietly making a sharp U-turn for all of civilization to see. It's The Springs Preserve in Las Vegas, and when its campus of natural history and futuristic desert living opens in May, it just might be the greenest show on Earth.

Part of what the Las Vegas Valley Water District decided to do when this whole public-private idea got rolling a decade ago was a natural extension of what it had been doing: demonstrating water-efficient landscaping. But with the city's centennial (2005) approaching, they wanted to do something special with Big Springs, the place Indians, trains and the first settlers once used for water. The result will be a $250 million, 180-acre "eco-island" that not only showcases an ambitious collection of sustainable architecture — seven buildings may eventually be LEED Platinum certified, an honor the U.S. Green Building Council has bestowed on only 26 buildings thus far — but also shows off how it functions.

"A lot of museums are going green," says The Springs Preserve spokesman Jesse Davis, "but none of them are interpreting it. We're taking the next step and using it as an educational tool."

The preserve consists of six major educational components: the visitor center (designed by Tate Snyder Kimsey Architects of Henderson, Nevada), an eight-acre botanical garden, a trail system bordered by historic structures, a desert wetland area, the Nevada State Museum (to be opened in 2008, designed by Paul Steelman Design Group of Las Vegas) and the best example of green design, the Desert Living Center, a five-building village (all up for Platinum) whose purposes will be to "give people perspective on how to live in the desert," says project manager Jeff Roberts, AIA, of Lucchesi Galati Architects in Las Vegas.

Lucchesi Galati Architects' Desert Living Center at The Springs Preserve.

Snaking through the Desert Living Center is an exhibit called "Inside Out," which reveals each structure's sustainable secrets. In one building, for example, there's a "truth window" showing the straw bale used to insulate the walls (it's the largest commercial straw-bale construction project in the United States); another offers a cross-section of a rammed-earth wall (Roberts says it's only the second rammed-earth commercial structure in America).

The DLC also uses cooling towers as the primary air-conditioning throughout; in winter, there's a radiant heating system in the floors. Its rotunda has photovoltaic cells, and each roof demonstrates a different way of collecting rainwater. They've even found a way to treat wastewater on-site (for the entire site), using bio-filtration ponds. And there are dozens of other touches designed to achieve the Platinum rating, from low-VOC paints to reusing century-old railroad trestle as a truss.

Roberts, who'll have been at this for nine years by the time The Springs Preserve opens, says his firm skipped the high-tech route to sustainability in favor of "ideas that don't change," as that seemed most appropriate given the whole context. "We went back to historical cultures to design these buildings in a very modern way," he says. So, for example, four of the five DLC buildings are buried up to the second level, "an idea that comes from desert tortoise burrows." The cooling towers go back to the Middle East in the 1600s, and credit the solar orientation to the Anasazi.

While the DLC will have dozens of interpretive exhibits in its Sustainability Gallery, from the Compost Crawl for kids to a look inside a fuel-efficient car for adults, the nearby 75,000-square-foot visitor center will focus on Las Vegas' natural and cultural history. Project manager Randy Spitzmesser's five-year assignment for Tate Snyder Kimsey has been not only to help make those subjects fun (attractions will include an IMAX-like theater, a walk-in flash-flood experience and a lizard pit), but to house them in an attractive, LEED-certified structure.

So far, so good. In 2003, the Tate Snyder Kimsey plan won an AIA Nevada design award (Honor, Unbuilt). Goal No. 2, meantime, has been to achieve a LEED Platinum certification, a somewhat complicated process. "As the years have gone by, more sustainable materials have been added to the marketplace, so we've had more opportunities to heighten the level of sustainability," says Spitzmesser, AIA. "It's a big jump to Platinum, and a lot of things you have to do to get to those levels are more expensive, like the huge solar photovoltaic arrays." Fortunately, the Water District sprung for that feature, as well as the aforementioned wastewater reclamation plant. In addition, products such as waterless urinals become affordable enough to fit into the budget during the long design process.

Tate Snyder Kimsey's visitor center for the preserve.

It's extra challenging to achieve Platinum in the desert, where the big effort is keeping cool. "That takes a lot more energy than the heating side of things," Spitzmesser says. So, for example, when he's striving to achieve the LEED standard for natural light, he also has to take into account the potential "heat gain that'll take more energy to cool down."

Visitors will be able to find such answers when The Springs Preserve is finished, because a bonus lesson has developed beyond the original goals of green buildings and green exhibits. "The different project teams all came up with different ways to approach LEED, so the Desert Learning Center will have a gallery that actually shows how each credit is earned and how we approached it," Roberts says. "So this becomes a LEED presentation, too."

This will take some getting used to for Sin City outsiders. Which may be why, in a recent press release about the preserve, it was described as a "non-gaming attraction."