Colorado’s biggest buildings clash with air regulators

BY MICHAEL BOOTH THE COLORADO SUN

Dennis Supple has done the math on everything demanded by Colorado regulators writing greenhouse gas e ciency rules for big buildings, and he’s certain his LoDo o ce would be lost in the equation.

e nonpro t he manages facilities for lls much of a classy brick and plate glass ve-story building built in 1985 and recently renovated. But the proposed Air Quality Control Commission rule for cutting emissions in buildings over 50,000 square feet would hand over a long punch list of expensive mandates, Supple said.

“Every window in this building would have to be changed, the exterior walls would have to be widened,” said Supple, speaking out against the rules from his role as president of the Denver chapter of the International Facilities Management Association. e draft rule has an e ciency target number in mind for his place, “and the amount of insulation between the walls and the drywall would have to increase almost two to threefold to hit that number. It’s not a simple number to hit.”

Total cost to comply?

“We gured it at about $6 million,” Supple said. “Yep. And that’s a $6 million outlay that no board of directors has in their budget, at this point in time, especially in downtown Denver, in a commercial building. You just don’t have an extra $6 million laying around.