BOULDER, Colo. — Three athletic buildings at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU) were certified LEED Platinum in fall 2017 — the highest possible LEED rating. With this latest certification by the USGBC, CU now has 25 buildings certified LEED Gold or better, either for new construction or major renovations.

The three new LEED Platinum certifications applied to the Champions Center, the net-zero-energy Indoor Practice Facility (IPF) as well as the extensive renovations done to the Dal Ward Athletic Center. All three of the athletic buildings were included in a CU athletic department facilities upgrade project that arrived at completion in 2016. The three buildings were certified in December 2017, which raised CU’s number of LEED Platinum certified building to 10.

Completion of the new Champions Center brought a new home for CU athletics administration, the CU football program, Olympic sports, the CU Sports Medicine and Performance Center as well as the Champions Club. The IPF is a climate-controlled facility and includes a full football field as well as a six-lane, 300-meter track. Upgrades to the Dal Ward Athletic Center feature new locker rooms and a new weight room for CU Olympic sports, a new room for the Herbst Academic Center and the Touchdown Club room. The Champions Center as well as the Dal Ward construction also included the addition of a pair of premium seating areas at Folsom Field.

“Achieving LEED Platinum for a project of this magnitude is a testament to the work and collaboration of several campus departments and partners,” said David Kang, vice chancellor for infrastructure and safety at CU in a recent statement. “Athletics has been a key driver of campus efforts to be a leader in sustainability, and this project is a shining example of that.”

The three-buildings project was led by Denver-based Mortenson Construction and Populous — a Denver-based architecture firm — as a joint design-build venture. Noresco, an energy services company based in Boulder, Colo., provided sustainability consulting services on the project. Construction on the project began in 2014, with different aspects of the project opening in 2015 and 2016 before its final completion at the end of 2016.

The most noteworthy sustainability feature of the athletic facilities upgrade project is the 850-kilowatt solar array that sits atop the IPF, with an estimated annual production of more than 1 million kilowatt hours. The entirety of the energy use of the IPF is offset by the solar array, which includes 28 percent of  the Athletics facilities’  usage.

Other sustainability aspects of the athletics project that helped to earn the highest LEED rating for the buildings include ample daylighting in the Champions Center and IPF, reduced water use through sustainable fixture selection, mechanical and lighting systems controls that enable optimization of energy, heating and cooling systems, and a new stormwater detention pond at the corner of Folsom Street and Stadium Drive that provides natural filtration of stormwater from the site.

“These state-of-the-art facilities have proven transformational to the success of our Athletic Department,” said Rick George, athletic director at CU, in a recent statement. “We’re proud that sustainability was at the forefront in the way they were built and how we use them every day.”

In addition to the recent and past LEED certifications CU has earned over the years, Folsom Field was the nation’s first zero-waste collegiate stadium, and the Ralphie’s Green Stampede program was the nation’s first NCAA Division I sports sustainability program. In addition, all events held at Folsom Field and the Coors Events Center are zero-waste events.

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The facility, created in partnership with locally based Aurora Health Care, is being designed by a team of four national and local architecture firms led by architect of record Sink Combs Dethlefs, located in Denver. Locally based HGA, Boston-based Ellenzweig and Denver-based Peter Park LLC round out the design team. Aurora Health Care is investing $40 million in the athletic performance research center, while the university will also seek sponsorship and other partnership opportunities.

The approximately 300,000-square-foot athletic performance research center will span 12 acres, combining indoor playing fields for the university’s lacrosse and soccer programs and an indoor track with top-notch research capabilities. These will allow faculty and students to conduct research in sports performance, medicine, nutrition and rehabilitation, while encouraging collaborative research in emerging fields such as exercise physiology, athletic training and biomedical engineering.

Other key highlights of the facility include weight and training rooms as well as office space to serve the intercollegiate athletics program. The track and field will also be used by intramural and club sports programming, and classroom and conference space will also be available.

The athletic performance center will be accessible to the entire student population, and student feedback will be integrated throughout the design process, according to the project website. In fact, that’s how the university identified the great demand for access to better health and wellness opportunities for students and realized that existing student health facilities were operating at maximum capacity.

A major part of the project will be to foster community engagement and create new and enhanced partnerships throughout the region, according to the project website. It will create an opportunity for health care providers and scholars — i.e., researchers and clinicians from Marquette and Aurora Health Care — to work together and foster research breakthroughs in physiological and psychological areas of human and health performance.

The center will specifically allow Aurora Health Care to expand its cross-disciplinary, patient- and community-centered research, according to the project website. The health organization’s research will result in improved fitness and performance for professional athletes, average exercisers and entire communities. Aurora will even provide Marquette with additional dedicated medical sports staffing, including physician coverage for all sports teams, full-time licensed athletic trainers and designated chiropractic and physical therapy consults.

“The creation of such a facility gives us new opportunities that we haven’t seen before and also the opportunity to attract experts from all over the world,” said Dr. Kris Ropella, Opus Dean of Engineering, in a statement.

Construction is expected to break ground later this year, and the project will likely take three years to complete. The university’s goal is to open the facility at the same time the Milwaukee Bucks, the city’s professional basketball team, open their multipurpose arena and sports and entertainment district, according to the project website.

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