LEED® for Neighborhood Development Gold

Symphony Park™ is the only project in the state of Nevada to be accepted into the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED®-ND) national pilot program. This program, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), is creating a rating system that integrates the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national rating system for neighborhood design.

In 2008, Symphony Park was awarded Gold certification status under stage 2 (approved and entitled but not yet completed) by the USGBC for the community. As part of this program, all individual buildings in the Symphony Park Master Association are also required to meet LEED NC (New Construction) standards.

Benefits of LEED building

There are significant environmental benefits that can actually be quantified for Symphony Park.

Consider the following:

• Electric and gas energy savings will be enough to power approximately 2,100 standard U.S. homes per year for the life of the project. That is equivalent to eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from 4,450 cars per year for the life of the project.

• The potable indoor water saved by the use of efficient water fixtures in the restrooms, baths, kitchens and laundries of project buildings will save approximately 124 million gallons of water per year – enough to supply water to about 500 standard U.S. homes for a year or fill 6,200 swimming pools.

• The use of parking structures for all but curbside parking and the use of energy efficient rooftops will significantly reduce the heat island impact of conventional development practices. This reduction in heat absorbing areas will result in lower nighttime temperatures and reduced daytime cooling loads during the hot summer months in Las Vegas.

• The compact, walkable and mixed-use nature of Symphony Park with easy access to new and efficient public transportation – via the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line on Grand Central Avenue – will result in significantly fewer cars. Traffic engineers estimate this savings to be about one-third fewer car trips per day when compared to a suburban development of the same size. This means that Symphony Park will have about 13 million fewer car trips (6.5 million fewer cars) per year going to and from the site.

Land recycling

Not only does Symphony Park embrace environmentally sensitive development practices going forward, it embodies the very essence of land recycling by transforming a fallow brownfield site into a vibrant community. Symphony Park is taking shape on a 61-acre infill community that was used as a Union Pacific railyard for more than 70 years.

Site remediation

The aggressive clean-up and remediation of this brownfield site, along with ultra-green development plans that have earned Symphony Park LEED-ND Gold certification by the USGBC, are making this emerging downtown community one of the country’s best examples of land recycling.  The remediation, funded by the city of Las Vegas during excavation activities by private developers, is reclaiming once unusable land and making way for the city’s most impressive collection of important civic, medical and cultural facilities that together, create Symphony Park. 

Today, this brownfield is going green through a carefully orchestrated and coordinated cleanup.  Newland Communities and individual project developers are working with the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Division of Environmental Protection and the city of Las Vegas to scrub the excavated soil and remove groundwater contaminants deposited at the site – as construction on each parcel starts.