THE GOLD Take the hotel mattress home
to keep on sleeping responsibly. People do. Shopping’s not necessarily green behavior, but sleeping in the LEED Gold certified CityFlats Hotel in Holland, Michigan is. Floors, fabrics, windows, ceilings, plumbing, elevators and even that mattress submitted to scrutiny. Gold rating doesn’t come easily from the U. S. Green Building Council; it seems only two other hotels have earned it: Gaia (means Mother Earth in Greek) Hotel and Spa in the Napa Valley and The Element in Massachusetts. A new kind of place, CityFlats opened in this city of 35,000 people and 600,000 tulips on the shores of Lake Michigan in April 2008 intending to be a prototype for more sustainability. “The cost of doing green sustainable design is not out of reach,” president and owner Chuck Reid says even after all the bills were in. “This is the right thing to do. “It’s all attainable and in some ways for less today considering the advances in LED lights.” It probably helps in his quest to create jobs, shop without triggering longdistance transport and boost the local economy that Reid also heads up Charter House Innovations in Holland, a custom design firm manufacturing for large restaurants around the world. CityFlats doesn’t feel like a first try, an experiment. It’s solid, and comfortable, all 56 sleeping rooms plus meeting spaces, fitness center, stadium-seat theater room, restaurants and watering holes. CityFlats Hotel in Holland, Michigan, earned a Gold LEED rating through the U. S. Green Building Council.
10.2 MAR.APR / TRAVELWORLD MAGAZINE