Alberici Constructors

St. Louis, Missouri
General Contractor: Alberici Constructors, St. Louis, Missouri

There are only nine Platinum LEED® ™ certified buildings in the world. One of these buildings is the headquarters of St. Louis-based Alberici Constructors.

The LEED certification program was developed and is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council, a national non-profit organization, created to encourage energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly design and construction.

Founded in 1918, Alberici is known for its innovation and wanted to create one of the "greenest" buildings in the U.S. It is a model of sustainable design and construction coupled with innovative, adaptive reuse of an existing 485-foot by 300-foot steel building. The new facility features a significant reduction in life cycle costs, conserves natural resources, improves the quality of the environment for the community and adds to the quality of life at work for Alberici employees.

Situated on a 14-acre tract of land, the new facility consists of a 110,000 square-foot mezzanine-style office building and multi-level, indoor 300-car parking garage.

The building appears to be two structures separated by a 70 foot wide courtyard and was created by using most of the existing steel columns and steel joists erected in the 1950s to enclose the original metal building on the site. Today what looks to be two 485-foot long buildings, divided by a 70-foot wide by 485-foot long outdoor courtyard, is actually one structure. Twenty-two steel trusses tie the two buildings together.

This adaptive reuse of the steel-joisted structure which uses 710 existing steel joists qualifies for significant LEED certification credits. The estimated savings for adaptive reuse in this application:

Steel cost saved:    $593,800
Construction cost saved: $989,667
Environmental cost saved:    $266,000 saved in tipping fees by diverting 10,000 tons of construction and demolition waste material from the landfill.

The Class A office space is designed for approximately 300 workers and has a 300-person multi-purpose room, 150-person cafeteria with outdoor patio, training classrooms, and a complete fitness center with lockers and showers.

Nothing has been left to chance in this environmentally-conscious facility. A giant wind turbine atop a 124-foot monopole generates approximately 20 percent of the site's annual electrical energy. By using collected, filtered and treated rainwater from the garage roof, the building saves approximately 500,000 gallons of water used for toilet flushing and other non-potable water needs. In fact, the system is designed to have zero reliance on city water for sewage removal and zero storm water discharge into municipal sewers. By having windows that open, energy is saved during mild weather, and building occupants have more controllability of their personal environment. The building is designed to be 61 percent more efficient compared to a baseline building's energy cost budget.

The list of innovations goes on and on and includes the reuse, donating or recycling of 95 percent of the construction and demolition waste that normally goes in landfill.

To learn more about the Alberici project visit, www.alberici.com. To learn more about the "green" nature of steel joists and other steel products, visit www.recycle-steel.org. To learn more about steel joists visit www.steeljoist.org. To learn more about U.S. Green Building Council and LEED program, visit www.usgbc.org. 

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