Tiffany Wilmot, talks about Nashville's largest green construction project
LEED Consultant to Bell/Clark on Nashville's signature Music City Center
At 1.2 million sf of convention space, Music City Center (MCC) located adjacent to the Sommet Center in Nashville's SoBro district, will more than double the downtown meeting and exhibit space available in the current convention center. Music City Center is planned as an architectural masterwork, capturing Nashville's style and complementing the city's unique character. In keeping with the city's commitment to sustainable development, MCC will be a showcase for state of the art green technologies, like the planned green roof.
Will Stack: Why is this project so important?
Tiffany Wilmot: "With scale of this project, it's very important to make the new convention center as green as possible. We could green hundreds of individual homes and not conserve as many resources as we will on this one project. Music City Center will set a standard in large-scale green building. It will be a world-class convention center and it will educate convention goers from all over the world about green buildings who will take those ideas home with them.
In 2007, the Mayor and city council adopted an ordinance to require that all new Metro buildings attain LEED silver. Most building owners look only at first-costs, but the economics of green building are that an up-front investment of only 2% yields an average of 20% return over 10 years. That's 10 times the initial investment. In addition to cost savings, there are also a number of less tangible benefits to green construction, from healthier indoor air quality to higher worker productivity. Projects like MCC re-enforce the positive economics of LEED construction and raise awareness for others to go green.
Today buildings use 39% of all energy produced in the US, more than industry or even transportation. With dwindling world resources, that's not sustainable and this project will be a showcase for how we can save energy with a minimal investment during construction."
Will: Is this truly a passion for you?
Tiffany: "Absolutely. As a LEED consultant I'm on a mission to arm people with knowledge so they can do the right thing, grow my business, and have fun in the process. Research has shown that LEED construction is healthier; with healthier buildings owner profits go up and the people that work in those buildings are more productive. As an example, studies with students with the most natural day lighting in their classrooms progressed 20% faster on math tests and 26% faster on reading tests in one year than those with less day lighting"
Will: What have you learned through your work?
Tiffany: "We need a new model for the way we design products and buildings that's regenerative. Bill McDonough says that a tree absorbs CO2, creates O2, provides shade & beauty, absorbs water, provides a habitat for birds and animals… when it dies, it provides a home for other animals then biodegrades back into soil so that something else can grow from it. If we can begin to use a tree as an example of how we manufacture our products, we'd be able to use our wastes as raw materials for other products, save money and capture the excess energy for reuse. We can emulate the tree by creating buildings that use solar panels to produce energy, grow food on our roofs, and treat our waste water on site. The beautiful Creation all around us has almost unlimited examples for how we can make everything we need with no waste.
-Tiffany Wilmot is an award-winning LEED building consultant and president of Wilmot Inc., on the Mayor’s Green Ribbon Committee, the Kilowatt Ours Board of Directors and an adjunct professor in Lipscomb University’s Sustainable Practice Program. She’s a graduate of Duke University with an MBA from GA State University. She’s a devoted wife and mother of 2 wonderful children. twilmot@wilmotInc.com
-Will Stack is a contributing editor to the newsletter of the US Green Building Council of Middle Tennessee and works as an indoor air quality and energy diagnostician for DocAir LLC. He is a graduate of Belmont University’s Jack C. Massey Graduate School of Business. He may be reached at wstack@docair.com
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