Bensenville Police & Emergency Management Headquarters Awarded Prestigious LEED® Green Building Certification
On April 5, 2016 the Bensenville Police & Emergency Management Headquarters has been awarded LEED® Gold. The LEED rating system, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), is the foremost program for buildings, homes and communities that are designed, constructed, maintained and operated for improved environmental and human health performance.
"We are honored to receive this prestigious certification and lead by example with our many "green" initiatives here in Bensenville," said Village President Frank Soto. "We are very proud to have completed this project on time, under budget, and without any additional taxes or costs to our residents."
The new 47,000 square foot state of the art headquarters is an adaptive reuse of a blighted industrial building that was vacant since 1998. It replaces the 13,500 square foot Public Safety Building at 100 North Church Road built in 1972 that had gone past its functional lifecycle.
"The green building movement offers an unprecedented opportunity to respond to the most-important challenges of our time, including global climate change, dependence on non-sustainable and expensive sources of energy and threats to human health," said Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and founding chair, USGBC. "The work of innovative building projects such as Bensenville's Police & Emergency Management Headquarters is a fundamental driving force in the green building movement."
The new Headquarters addresses the numerous functional and operational issues with the previous Public Safety Building. The new Headquarters is ADA compliant, allows reports to be taken in private, provides for a safer environment for officers, prisoners and the general public, facilitates modern and professional police investigations, operations and training, and includes a large multi-purpose room that allows for more interaction with the public at meetings and that also serves as a fully equipped emergency operations center.
In an effort to support local business the Village made extra effort to advertise the bidding opportunities locally which resulted in awarding nearly $1 million dollars of the project to Bensenville businesses.
The Village also aggressively sought out cost saving opportunities and programs to reduce the Village's out-of-pocket costs as much as possible. By staggering the bond issuances the Village had the ability to obtain Qualified Energy Conservation Bond (QECB) rebates through the DuPage County DCEO for more than $6 million of the overall bond issuance. By delaying a year for the second tract of bonds the Village achieved savings of $1.25 million due to the issued bonds being bank qualified.
As a result of being a green community and building the police station to LEED Gold standards, making it over 20% more efficient than a standard building of its size, the Village will receive a 70% federal rebate on all interest paid for these bonds. This drops the effective interest rate on the $6.185 million bonds to only 1.46% (from 4.88%). Savings are estimated to be at a minimum $550,000 and can grow to $1,500,000 by time the bonds are paid out. The Village has also been awarded $117,788 in grants to reimburse energy efficiency upgrades through DCEO's Illinois Energy Now program. Illinois Clean Energy has awarded $25,000 for the LEED Gold Certification process already underway.