Blog

January 7th, 2016

The Green Initiative: Multi-Family Industry Goes Eco-Friendly

As a city located in the middle of a desert, Las Vegas is at an environmental disadvantage when it comes to making homes affordable and Eco-friendly.

Ninety percent of the city’s water comes from Lake Mead, and low rainfall in the area cannot contribute much to the supply. Enter the green movement, the environmental initiative that awards developers with certification for making their buildings environmentally friendly.

Many hotels in the Las Vegas area are hard at work to obtain this Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, and multi-family developments are right behind them. The luxury condominium development Veer Towers, located in the city’s center, is one of the area’s first multi-family communities to be awarded LEED Gold certification. The 37-floor structures that make up the towers use frit-coated vision glass and checkerboard sunscreens to limit heating from the sun, while the entire development generates its own power through a natural gas co-generation plant. While developers of affordable housing and lower income multi-family communities might not have the resources to build their own power plant on-site, it is possible to take other measures to conserve energy and become more environmentally conscious.

A community-wide recycling program, energy-efficient appliances, and a water conservation initiative would be a good start towards minimizing our environmental impact. In a city that relies on environmental awareness to survive, it only makes sense that this concern for resource availability trickle down to the businesses and multi-family communities that call Las Vegas home.