On July 24, 2008, Amy Woidtke (woid-key) wrote an article in the Examiner.com about thinkspace! Amy came into thinkspace a week ago and I had a very good time talking to her about the space and gave her a tour as well. In addition to writing for the Examiner’s Green Living section, Amy is a [...]
Filed under: Green Living, green building, office space redmond, thinkspace | 1 Comment »
On June 30, 2008, Thinkspace had it’s Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. Thinkspace broke new ground by being the first building in the Puget Sound Region to market pre-certified, “green” LEED-compliant executive office suites with a carbon neutral option. The 25,000 square feet of executive office suites is located at 8201 164th Avenue in downtown Redmond. According [...]
Filed under: LEED, green building, sustainability | 3 Comments »
Mary Decker, Reporter for The Redmond Reporter wrote an article in the June 14th newspaper about thinkspace. “Like many of his Sammamish neighbors, entrepreneur Peter Chee thought it would be wonderful to work at home. Instead, he felt isolated. He missed the atmosphere…: Here’s a link to the article.
Filed under: LEED, business, green building | 2 Comments »
The Eastside Business Journal published an article about thinkspace on May 22. The full article can be found here. Here are a few highligts from the article.
Thanks to thinkspace, almost any small start-up company can overcome daunting obstacles, costs and compliance issues to become a certified “green” business from day one.
“Many small businesses find it advantageous [...]
Filed under: LEED, business, green building, sustainability | 2 Comments »
On page 7 of the May 23-29, 2008 edition of the Puget Sound Business Journal, Thinkspace is highlighted as a new Eastside executive office suite.
The PSBJ commercial real estate reporter Jeanne Lang Jones tells the story of Thinkspace how we are seeking LEED silver certification, how we used HEPA filters to control dust during demolition and how [...]
Filed under: LEED, carbon footprint, green building, sustainability | 3 Comments »
Thinkspace offers big business benefits to companies of all sizes and operate their business with a small footprint. To us, a small footprint means operating your business in office space that was designed with sustainability in mind.
Your company name does not have to be “Dell, General Electric, Google, Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Microsoft, or [...]
Filed under: LEED, executive office suites, green building, sustainability | 2 Comments »
Every private office has an occupancy sensor in our newly built out Thinkspace office. Our goal is to reduce energy consumption by more than 30% for the space that we occupy. We installed commercial light fixtures with higher performance ballast and lamps. That alone should help us get to the 30% energy savings. In addition [...]
Filed under: Cost of Green, Energy, LEED, green building | 3 Comments »
The Thinkspace main lobby desk has been built and installed. In addition to having a professional appearance we wanted our lobby to make a statement about sustainability. To gather ideas, we went to Ecohaus and looked at different types of materials and decided we wanted to showcase beautiful sustainable materials.
We used a gorgeous Vetrazzo recycled [...]
Filed under: LEED, green building, sustainability | 1 Comment »
For our commercial tenant improvement project we chose to go with a “green” carpet. The critical things to look for when picking a commercial grade environmentally sustainable carpet is 1) what is the carpet top made of; 2) what is the backing material made of; 3) what type of adhesives will be used.
Carpet Top: The [...]
Filed under: LEED, Recycle, green building, sustainability | 3 Comments »
We have put a lot of focus on air quality for our executive office suites build-out. Early on in our design process we decided to use either a low or no-VOC paint. Yes, it’s good for the environment (reduces smog and ozone pollution) but even more important it is good for your health.
“VOCs” are Volatile [...]
Filed under: Cost of Green, LEED, green building, green interior | 2 Comments »
Tenant improvements can require a new company moving into an existing building to create a lot of demolition debris. In order to build out our Thinkspace executive office suites, 5.79 tons or 11,580 pounds of demolition debris was removed. The number of tons could have been much greater, but one of our goals was to [...]
Filed under: Cost of Green, Innovation in Design, LEED, Recycle, green building | No Comments »
On March 13th, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) issued a report stating “buildings represent the greatest opportunity for considerable reductions in CO2 emissions”.
“Every year, buildings in North America cause more than 2,200 megatons of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere, about 35 percent of the continent’s total CO2 emissions. In the United States [...]
Filed under: Cost of Green, business, green building, green interior, sustainability | No Comments »
Puget Sound Energy (PSE) has awarded a $13,000 conservation grant to Thinkspace for energy efficient lighting retrofits. Thinkspace’s plan calls for a reduction in energy consumption by approximately 21,106 KWH. Annual energy cost savings are estimated to be a little over two-thousand dollars per year. Our discussions with PSE have been on-going for three months. It [...]
Filed under: Cost of Green, Energy, green building, sustainability | No Comments »
Over the past few months, I have been searching for companies, organizations, government agencies that encourage other companies to go green with their tenant improvements. One of the first places that I called was PSE (Puget Sound Energy). I talked with an Energy Management Engineer and he was happy and willing to meet me at [...]
Filed under: Cost of Green, Energy, green building | No Comments »
In addition to using HEPA air purifiers to maintain air quality during the demolition of the existing space, we also took a close look at the existing HVAC system. Inside the space we have existing VAV (variable air volume) boxes. VAV boxes are used to zone areas in large commercial buildings and also contribute significantly to the [...]
Filed under: HVAC, LEED, green building | No Comments »