Sami, great question!

The location of a building is very important when getting LEED certification.

There is a whole section dedicated to Sustainable Sites (SS). Certain things should get looked at when picking a location of a building. What was the land used for before the building was put on it? For instance, there are points for buildings that are located on brownfields (of course the contamination needs to be cleaned up).

Also check what is around the building. Are there alternative transportation options?

What does the parking lot look like? The point is to minimize parking lot/garage sizes.

Sharing parking facilities with neighboring businesses is a great option. What other services are available around your retail store? All that is taken into consideration.

One of my favorite points within SS is protect or restore habitat. This is when you try to minimize the footprint of the building. Here we are trying not to disturb that natural habitat around the building.

This is just a small portion of the SS section. There is a lot that goes within this topic and it also depends upon what LEED certification the building is going to get.

For additional information regarding Sustainable Sites, you can check out the USGBC LEED for Retail site.

Thanks again!

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