L.A. Convention Center Gets “Green” Building Certification (In Advance of Getting Electronic Billboards)
Just weeks after the city council voted to allow energy-consuming electronic billboards and other signage on the façade of the L.A. Convention Center, the building has been given LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. This leading environmental building group cited the facility’s use of solar power and other energy saving measures, as well as its efforts in recycling and water conservation, according to articles posted on the website of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who sent a letter to city council members supporting the plan to put more than 50,000 square feet of signage on the convention center façade, was quoted as saying the following about the convention center. “They serve as an example for what all major buildings in Los Angeles can do to promote a clean, sustainable future.”
In the city council discussion preceding a vote to allow AEG, the owner of Staples Center and L.A. Live, to put up the signage, nobody asked about the energy consumption of the LED billboards, which constitute almost 8,000 square feet of the total. However, a study by a chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council in Texas recently found that the carbon footprint of one full-sized, 14×48 digital billboard, was equivalent to that of 13 average houses. By that formula, the electronic convention center signs would use the energy of 175 of those houses.
The signage plan also calls for two very large billboards covering much of the convention center’s twin glass entry towers. According to the LEED certification, these towers include patterned glass inlays that are thicker where the solar exposure is greatest, providing “solar attenuation” that reduces the need for added air conditioning. Presumably, the billboards covering the glass would cancel at least part of that benefit.
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Dennis Hathaway
