By now, nearly everyone involved with sustainability has heard of the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center. It’s become something of an icon since 2007’s Greenbuild. It was the recipient of Forest Stewardship Council-US’s (FSC-US) Designing & Building with FSC Award for its use of FSC-certified wood products. As stated by ED+C publisher and FSC Award selection committee member, Diana Brown, “This year’s winner, the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, exceeded the goals of the award criteria by using 78 percent FSC wood, site harvested and locally processed FSC wood, showed education in the green building industry and growth in the use of certified wood in the community. An outstanding project!”

But that was just one of the accolades this project received. Of those other accomplishments, the one most noted is its achievements with LEED. Not only was it certified LEED Platinum, it did so with the most LEED points accumulated by a project — ever — with 61. Based on the scorecard (which you can view at www.EDCmag.com), if the project team attempted to achieve the point, it succeeded. But how did this project team succeed when others attempt to do the same all the time and fail?

“Buddy Huffaker [executive director for The Aldo Leopold Foundation] challenged the team with the thought of building a carbon-neutral building,” says Joel S. Krueger, architectural project manager for The Kubala Washatko Architects Inc., the project’s architect. “This, of course, is tough as it is hard to determine one’s realm of influence. What do you include in your calculation of carbon production, where do you stop? This idea forced us to work very hard to consider every move; where are materials coming from, how can the building become a producer of energy rather than a consumer, is it ok for staff to drive to work? This was an amazing exercise.”

But, says Huffaker, the team just followed The Aldo Leopold Foundation’s tenets. “From the beginning we were informed and inspired by the work and ideas of Aldo Leopold. We felt if we upheld our interpretation of his call for a land ethic, in essence an appreciation, understanding, and respect for nature, that we would be able demonstrate what a sustainable building could accomplish.”

The team’s ability to maximize the site-specific elements for the project sets it apart. It’s one thing to take from an area without regard for the property’s natural elements. It’s quite another, though, to use what nature gives you. The Aldo Leopold Legacy Center used what it was “given” more than it “took” better than any other perhaps any other project that has applied for LEED certification. Most notably, lumber.

“This project is unique from a contractor’s perspective in the extensive use of site-harvested lumber,” says Gregg Tucek, project manager, Central Operations, for Oscar J. Boldt Construction. “It is used in varying structural elements: site-built timber trusses, round wood trusses, posts and beams, and round wood rafters and decking. Additionally, it was used for custom doors, windows, cabinets and casework, flooring, interior and exterior siding.

“The same thing that makes this such a unique project also tended to lead to more ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking regarding education of, and coordinating the timber harvest, peeling, shipping, kiln-drying, identification of the species and quantities available for use in specific areas of the building, and then delivering to cabinet-makers and window manufacturers in a timely fashion to meet site construction schedules. Needless to say, flexibility was required and became the key to success.”

As much as flexibility was needed, a measure of rigidity and resolve was needed to see the owner’s goal fulfilled. Huffaker explains, “There are so many stops throughout the design and construction process where it would be easier to just lower the bar and do what is easy, but Aldo Leopold wrote in his seminal book, A Sand County Almanac, ‘In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.’ Despite great progress, it isn’t easy to build green. It takes a lot of hard work by the designers, the contractors, and the client.

“I think we really raised the bar on what is possible in the built environment. We had extremely high goals, and in the first year we fell short on achieving net zero energy, but we were at nearly 85 percent. That is still terrific. Once we work out some of the bugs and take into account that last year we set a record for snowfall, doubling the yearly average, I’m confident we will demonstrate that it is possible for a modern building to produce as much energy as it takes to operate it over the course of a year.”

The green community will eagerly wait to see how this record-setting project fares in the future with its goals. It has become the measuring stick to which any facility attempting LEED certification will be held. Of course, as we all know, records were meant to be broken.

Only time will tell what is achieved next.