October 15, 2009
Pleasant Ridge Montessori Becomes
Ohio's First LEED-registered K-12 Building
(West Chester, OH) Kleingers & Associates provided civil engineering design for the first LEED Silver Certified Public K-12 school in the state of Ohio. The new Pleasant Ridge Montessori, designed by Steed Hammond Paul for Cincinnati Public Schools, was engineered to meet the standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ created by the United States Green Building Council. The LEED system is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings.
K&A's Cheryl Vandewater, P.E., one of the pioneering group of LEED-accredited civil engineers in Ohio, managed the civil engineering phase of the project. "Once you understand the holistic approach of the LEED system," she said, "you realize it's truly different from past environmental efforts. LEED takes into account a building's owner and end user - in this case, the students - emphasizing things like occupant comfort and natural daylight, which has shown to improve test scores in schools by as much as 20%. They're not just worried about the trees. It's also about the people who use the buildings."
Project designer Michelle Smith, who is also LEED-accredited, was part of the team that led the project to Silver level certification. "To reach that goal," she said, "we focused our efforts on reducing pollution derived from construction activity, favoring low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles in parking plans, and providing a high ratio of open space in relation to the development footprint to promote biodiversity."
Cincinnati Public Schools adopted the sustainable design standards established by Pleasant Ridge Montessori and is applying them to all of its future projects. These standards have also been adopted by The State of Ohio with a requirement that every new public school in the state built with state funds must meet LEED Silver certification or better.
