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Is WELL Certification Worth It for Developers?

 | Jul 07, 2017
The healthy workplace movement got a boost a few years ago when the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) partnered with the International Well Building Institute (IWBI) to streamline certification processes and minimize paperwork to achieve both Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and the WELL certifications simultaneously.
Launched in October 2014, WELL has registered or certified 450 projects, encompassing nearly 100 million sq. ft. of space in 27 countries, including 361 office projects.
“The rapid expansion of WELL worldwide underscores the fact that building and business developers, owners, and operators are taking notice of the need to harness the built environment as a tool to promote human health and wellness,” says IWBI President Kamyar Vaghar. He notes that IWBI is seeing increasing interest from core and shell building developers looking to achieve WELL certification, as well from tenants looking for buildings that facilitate a healthy fit-out.
WELL is an evidence-based system for designing, measuring, certifying and monitoring how buildings impact the health and well-being of occupants. It provides a 100 wellness features that impact 23 health pathways across seven concepts, including air, mind, water, nourishment, light, fitness, and comfort. Applicant spaces are evaluated for one year to ensure all necessary criteria are met before achieving certification and then are re-evaluated every three years for recertification.
In a 2014 Urban Land Institute study, which looked at the business case for developing healthy buildings, 13 developers reported that healthy buildings resulted in greater marketability and faster leasing and sales velocity, in addition to commanding higher rents than pro forma projections. They said the cost attributable to inclusion of wellness features represented a minimal percentage of the overall development budget.
An IWBI spokesperson told NREI that the cost to buildout the headquarters of Structure Tone, a New York City-based design firm, with WELL features came to less than $1 per sq. ft. 
Dave Pogue, CBRE global director of corporate responsibility, who recently worked with a developer on a WELL-certified project in Vancouver, Canada, says that the cost to add WELL features to a building varies considerably, with ground-up projects usually costing less because healthy features can be incorporated into what the developer is already doing. For existing projects, the cost is determined by what types of features a building already has in place.
Developers Hines and Kilroy Realty are embracing the WELL standard for new buildings going forward.
Kilroy has started construction on its first WELL project, a $450-million, 680,000-sq.-ft. office campus at Mission Bay, a tech-centric master-planned community in San Francisco.
The Mission Bay project is a pilot for the company to demonstrate the value of WELL features, according to Maya Henderson, Kilroy sustainability manager. “This is a great place to start building this type of project into our portfolio going forward,” she says.
Hines’ first building to register for WELL is 609 Main in Houston, Texas, a one-million-sq.-ft., multi-tenant building, which is also pursuing LEED Platinum. Full the full article, click here. 
#LEED #GreenBuildings #WELLCertification 

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