The Umatilla Head Start Center in Hermiston, Ore.

Competition for the rating of green buildings in Oregon has arrived. Portland-based Green Building Institute this week announced it awarded a rating of two globes through its Green Globes rating system to Umatilla Morrow Head Start, Victory Square Center in Hermiston, Ore.

Designed by Bend-based Pinnacle Architecture, the building was designed to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's minimum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, according to Heather McNeill, the firm’s sustainability coordinator. While the nonprofit used a grant to pay for the building project, it could not afford the $75,000 in fees on top of the building's $1 million price tag to actually attain LEED certification, McNeil says. 

The two-globe rating the project received from the Green Building Institute is comparable to a LEED Silver rating, McNeill says. And the certification for a project of this size adds about $10,000 to project costs--though McNeil says the lower cost of certification by Green Globes is not the reason they were able to improve on the design.

The main advantage between Green Globes and the United States Green Building Council’s LEED system is greater flexibility and opportunity for improvement, McNeill says. Instead of being locked into the choices on a predetermined check list, building owners benefit from an onsite inspection to help them choose appropriate features for their project. It provides an ability to be innovative that other systems lack, McNeil says.

“There were more options in the actual construction and design process to make some substitutions for more recycled and nontoxic materials,” she says. “That allowed us to bump it up.”

While Green Globes is more flexible in some aspects, it is not as widely recognized as LEED, which means that Pinnacle Architecture won’t be using just one system or the other any time soon. “It has to do with the client’s ultimate goals and what they need and value in the building,” she says. “If they need a perceived market value, I might turn them more to LEED because there’s a market value there. It’s crazy, it has little to do with actual experience. It has to do with perception.”