The Cupertino Courier
News
City's first green office building is approved
By Crystal Lu
Construction of the first green office building in Cupertino will begin in April and last about 11 months.
The city council on Jan. 8 voted unanimously to accept the planning commission's recommendation for approval of a 10,000-square-foot, two-story office building at 10900 N. Tantau Ave. The site, in the North Vallco area, is south of Homestead Road and Forge Drive.
The council also granted a tree removal permit to the applicant, Tantau Investments, LLC, to remove 37 trees to accommodate the new development. The developer will plant 92 trees. As many of those as possible will be drought-resistant native trees.
Tantau Investments is the first participant in Cupertino's voluntary green building program. The developer voluntarily proposed to seek LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Core and Shell silver certification for the project.
The LEED Core and Shell program allows for leaving certain parts of the interior design to tenant improvements and excluding them from rating. While the regular LEED silver certification requires 33 to 38 points of the maximum 69 points given for various green building features, it takes 28 to 33 points to obtain the LEED Core and Shell silver certification.
The green building features of the Tantau project will include a cool wall exterior, sun shading and insulating glass windows.
"We'd love it to be a medical office building," said Larry Wallerstein, who represented Tantau Investments at the council meeting. "We haven't signed on any tenants yet. Our dream is to have one tenant, but we may have up to four tenants."
The project site is a 6.6-acre property. It was previously developed with a 94,874-square-foot building, which housed a semi-conductor company from 1967 to 1988. General Electric was its occupant from 1992 to 1998. The building was demolished in 1998.
The site is currently vacant, except for a groundwater extraction treatment system located on its northeast corner.
The treatment system was installed for some organic compounds found within the soil and groundwater. The site was identified as part of a 15-acre U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, though the soil contamination was mitigated in 1993.
"It's important that the city is aware it's a Superfund site," said resident Jennifer Griffin at the council meeting. "I'm glad the developer is environmentally responsible."