spaces/play
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT
dressed to the nines The latest addition to the Luxury Collection of Starwood Hotels & Resorts—The Nines, in Portland, Oregon—is a testament to the affordability of sustainability. The hotel, so named because it occupies the top nine floors of the historic Meier & Frank Building, is the result of a $137 million renovation completed in October 2008. The brainchild of Portland-based Sera Architects, the renovation converted what was a solid box into a seven-story atrium, providing natural light to 331 guest rooms—a design so transformative that in 2009 Boutique Design gave the hotel its Best Hotel award and the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave it an Honor Award. The hotel, which is seeking LEED Silver certification, is in limited company: according to the USGBC, just 26 hotels were LEED certified in 2009, up from seven in 2008. The numbers suggest there’s no reason for this to be the case going forward. When Sera Architects completed a study analyzing hard and soft costs, they determined that the premium to pursue LEED Silver was just 1.2 percent—and after factoring in incentives, that number came down to 0.2 percent. Photos: The Nines, Sera Architects.
gbdmagazine.com
MARCH 2011 101