I love the smell of hipocracy in the morning

[Jason T. Radice]

The EPA plans a move to a LEED certified complex built on farm land well outside the any urban core (sprawl)  from their current downtown Kansas City, Kansas, location which has access to transit and population/service density. Their current building, built in 1998 before LEED, was purpose built for them and could qualify for LEED Gold.

 

Really? Moving out of a 13 year old building? What is wrong with this pickiture?

 

Read the article and have a good laugh!

 

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/epa_region_7_we_were_just_kidd.html

[Thomas J. Johnson]

More tax dollars well spent… but really, can you blame them? Have you ever been to Kansas City? I’d want to get out of there too…

[dewang patel]

want to know more about LEED certificate

http://www.vastutechnologies.com/

[Jordan Lockman]

Like

[Jon Quackenbush]

The greenest building is an existing building.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

Two directions of hipocracy can be taken from this – both based uopn not practicing what they preach.

 

The first and obvious is that the choice of the new location is clearly poor design from the development of criteria to the execution of picking the location and design itself. … this would be hipocracy by doing the wrong thing while preaching the right thing.

 

The other extreme possibility is that it is excellent design from a well developed program of needs, strong research of where employees live, actual transportatation habits of the employees and those doing business in the facility, ….. and a good execution of the design. … in which the hipocracy is that they are writing standards and a philosophy of “urban core” based on perception rather than reality.

 

The article cites statistics based on the carbon consumption of the people living in that area of the city, available public transportation, … That all means nothing if the people working there are choosing to live in Lenexa and driving in, or driving part way in. It almost assumes that they hire from the community  … well maybe for the janitorial staff, but these are largely government positions drawing from far and wide. Just how much “convenient pedestrian access” is needed to an EPA office (I wish I could walk to one from my house). Is it considered that whatever may go into the abandoned location may serve that local neighborhood directly, have more employment opportunities for the people who live there, a clientel that uses that public transportation more, ..?

 

I have no idea what the exact circumstances are that made this choice and whether or not it makes sense, but we all know that every project has competing needs that often compromise others. Choosing one criteria to apply in measuring a project ignores all others. By the same token, if that is indeed the case, they should take what they learned by going through the process, educate the rest of us on why this was a reasonable choice, and adjust their standards accordingly and there would be no hipocracy.

[Anonymous]

I was thinking the same exact thing.

What a sad, sad place and that’s coming from someone from Cleveland.

[Trace One]

Just curious, did you mean hip-o-cracy? Or hypocrisy? Probably both, I would think..

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I don’t know how to spell it.  I’m glad to see that you, like myself, also discovered that Olmsted has no “a” and no longer use one. It is wonderful that we can all learn from each other as we network together. Thanks.

[Trace One]

who said I lerned Olmsteed has no ‘a’?..I will always maintain that I will never learn how to spell the old master’s name, and that is all there is to it!

“Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, you could be missing the joke of the century.” Joan Rivers

 

[Trace One]

p.s., the comment on spelling was directed at Mr. Radish, actually, Andrew, but you can own it if  you want..

 

More on-topic, the construction of this EPA site is old news to me – many of the workers wrote in some huge comment site about various different aspects to the design that were good or bad, they all had lots of opinions..

I agree, tho, the most LEED friendly  building would seem to be the one that is already there, instead of a new one..It is a problem with our entire profession, as far as I am concerned, from a conservation standpoint..

I was pretty vocal when my ‘boss’ was apologizing as to why we are remaining in an old mall in an old department store, acres and acres of desks where there used to be mannikins and perfume counters…There is nothing wrong with this building, no reason to move or build a new one..I really hate that whole new-building thing..Our society IS set up,  however, for everyone to mostly make money just doing buildings.. Subsidized roads, easy construction loans that contractors can live off of..I think this is a real problem personally. As a renter, as most New   Yorkers are, I see a lot of predjudice against renting, but renting is what keeps cities alive, keeps people walking..

I am also against bussing children to school, since you asked..

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I know that it was not directed at me, but I did it  …. two. I was laughing at myself and being supportive of Jason and you in pointing out that we all make mistakes.

 

Group hug.

 

 

 

[Trace One]

Oh, my bad, I am programmed to respond humorously only to the smiley emoticon..sorry, Andrew!

group hug ! (that is a first!!!)

[Christopher Patzke]

I thought this was a thread about alternative governments led by hippopotamuses ; )

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

Occupy the Water Swamp – OWS

 

No one is going to write “hippopotami”?

[Author]

Posts