In April of 2007, Western’s Wade King Student Recreation Center was awarded LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC,) recognizing its advanced achievements in sustainability. This certification is the first in the nation for a university recreation center with a pool. “The LEED recognition for our recreation center is unusual. It is another example of the University’s continuing commitment to and national leadership with issues of sustainability,” said Western President Karen W. Morse.

Student interest and pressure led the university to seek LEED certification for the recreation center.  The project was funded by students and the local community rather than taxpayer funds. In order to be awarded a rating of Certified, a project must meet all of the prerequisites for new construction and then fulfill the requirements for at least 26 out of the 69 possible points.

The recreation center achieved certification with 26 points, the majority of which came from the Sustainable Sites and Innovation and Design Process categories.  The site and function of the building itself helped it to earn many of these points. Since it was added to an existing college campus, it could be connected to an existing storm water management system and infrastructure, and only about a dozen trees had to be taken down during construction. The recreation center is located on South Campus close to existing bus lines, parking lots and bike racks, and the showers and locker rooms facilitate bike commuting. The recreation center also earned five points for innovation, including the use of green housekeeping techniques and using the center to educate the community about green building.

The USGBC recommends that when applying for LEED certification more points should be attempted than are needed to achieve the desired certification level. This is because the requirements for meeting each point are so strict that not every attempted point will be awarded. In the case of the Wade King Recreation Center, this translated to some innovative actions that weren’t officially recognized in the LEED certification process but nevertheless had a positive impact on the local environment. Notably, the trees that were removed during construction were extracted with the roots intact and placed in local salmon runs, since the root structure provides ideal habitat for salmon spawning. This is an important part of salmon stream restoration and could have earned the recreation center another point for innovation, but the documentation of the action did not meet the rigorous standards required by the USGBC so it was not officially recognized.

One challenge to achieving LEED certification was the presence of the swimming pool. Even though the pool facility is state-of-the-art, it still requires a significant amount of energy and water usage and the application of chemicals. This precluded the university from applying for any points related to energy conservation. In order to attain LEED certification, the designers had to work around this and focus on other points and they were able to meet their goal. Hopefully this project will serve to show other universities that LEED certification is possible for recreation facilities with swimming pools.