Mammel Hall Becomes First Gold LEED Building at NU

2011.01.04 > For Immediate Releasecontact: Wendy Townley - University Relationsphone: 402.554.2762 - email: wtownley@unomaha.edu

Omaha - Mammel Hall, the new home to the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), has become the first building within the University of Nebraska system to earn LEED gold certification for its green and energy saving features.

Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an internationally recognized green building certification system. LEED provides third-party verification on construction projects that are built using strategies aimed at energy savings, water efficiency, carbon dioxide emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

Ground broke on the 120,000-square-foot Mammel Hall construction project, located at 67th and Pine Streets, in June 2008. The $34 million facility opened to UNO students, faculty and staff in August 2010.

Mammel Hall received LEED certification in 2010 based on the following features:

Development Density and Community Connectivity
The building’s design works to support connectivity between UNO and the adjacent Aksarben Village development.

Alternative Transportation: Public Transportation Access
Mammel Hall is located within a quarter-mile of one existing campus bus route and two existing city bus routes, thus promoting the use of public transportation and reducing pollution and land development impacts from automobile use.

Daylight and Views, Daylighting 75 Percent of Spaces
Daylight fills nearly 75 percent of the offices, conference rooms, open work areas, workstations, administrative areas and the dean’s suite. This feature provides students, faculty and staff a connection between indoor spaces and the outdoors, which, according to LEED standards, promotes productivity, comfort and wellbeing.

Water Reduction
The unique plant species used in the outdoor landscape design will reduce water consumed for irrigation by 52 percent.

Construction Waste Management
More than 97 percent of construction waste from Mammel Hall was diverted from landfills.

Thermographic Imaging
Infrared thermographic analysis of the exterior building’s envelope was conducted to insure the maximum thermal integrity.

Low Mercury and Energy Efficient Lamps
Mammel Hall construction crews established and maintained a toxic material source-reduction program to reduce the amount of mercury brought onto the building site and removed from the site in waste through the lamping of low mercury, energy efficient luminaires.

Optimize Energy Performance
Energy efficient light fixtures are used throughout Mammel Hall. Overall energy consumption has been reduced to 30 percent below the standard to reduce environmental impacts associated with excessive energy use.

Stormwater Management
About 20 percent of the rainwater that falls on and around Mammel Hall is fed to basins and allowed to percolate below ground to recharge the aquifer and reduce the demand on storm sewers.

“Many businesses have and are making the change to be more green, and many businesses are being created to provide green services and products,” said Rick Yoder of the Pollution Prevention Regional Information Center and the Nebraska Business Development Center at UNO. “What I think most of us are happiest about is that Mammel Hall – and the evolving initiative in sustainability – is representative of what can be accomplished through the great work of a team of many people from across the campus and the community. As nice as it is to be working in a great facility, it’s even nicer to have the collective efforts of campus and community working for future improvements.”

Among those community partners is Holland Basham Architects, who designed Mammel Hall.

“Mammel Hall not only serves as an iconic getaway to UNO’s Pacific Street campus, but also demonstrates a leadership attitude of doing ‘the right thing’ in terms of sustainability and positioning itself as a leader among peer institutions,” said Curt Witzenburg of Holland Basham Architects in Omaha. “With the College of Business Administration and Mammel Hall adopting a sustainable philosophy, the facility not only generates an increased level of interest within the community, but also has the potential to aid in student and faculty recruitment, as these groups become more aware of the positive effects these concepts have.”

Witzenburg added that designing buildings with an eye toward total “life cycle costs” makes good fiscal sense.

“A large percent of construction materials used on Mammel Hall were produced within a 500-mile radius, encouraging job growth while reducing transportation costs,” Witzenburg said. “Through creative daylighting strategies, innovating design of the building’s heating, cooling and lighting system, Mammel Hall is expected to see energy savings that result in less cost to taxpayers for the duration of the building.”

It is important to note that UNO is a campus that preserves its facilities. The oldest building at UNO – Arts and Sciences Hall, the university’s first building dedicated on Nov. 4, 1938 – is 73 years old.

College of Business Administration Dean Louis Pol said he anticipates Mammel Hall to continue serving students for the next 50 to 75 years, following the precedent set by older facilities on the UNO campus that are renovated and made anew for years to come.