In the summer of 2017, Suntide Commercial Realty was recognized by the City of Minneapolis for achieving the lowest energy consumption in a commercial building, 100,000 sf or larger. This was a very important award for Suntide, given their passion for energy reduction and the numerous projects they’ve completed to lower energy usage and expenses.
In October of 2015, the City of Minneapolis launched its Commercial Building Energy Challenge. This program offered tenants, property managers, and owners of large commercial buildings the opportunity to compete in a challenge to reduce their building’s greenhouse gas footprint by 15% by the year 2020.
Community Power
The goal of the program was to raise awareness about the impact energy consumption has on the city, both from a cost and environmental perspective. As is well known, large commercial buildings consume almost 50% of a city’s energy use. Therefore, large commercial buildings present an enormous opportunity to save energy.
Having an element of competition provided an incentive to spread awareness of the city’s energy efficiency program offerings, share success stories, and overall use peer-to peer marketing to motivate additional building owners to take action.
Energy Efficiency Upgrades
Starting in the year 2016, Suntide Commercial Realty entered two of their office buildings, Broadway Place East and Broadway Place West, into the challenge. Suntide owned and managed these assets and had made considerable efforts to reduce energy consumption and operating costs at the buildings. For example,
- Replaced aged boilers with new energy efficient condensing boilers
- Installed belimo valves on all of the heat pumps to regulate usage
- Installed new Energy Management Systems to optimize scheduling of equipment throughout the buildings
- Converted all lighting fixtures to new high efficiency LED fixtures
- Installed photo cells on all exterior light fixtures and added to EMS for optimal scheduling
- Installed Variable Frequency Drive’s (VFD’s) on the core pumps to allow for usage only when needed
- Elevator modernization with new traction elevators including regenerative capabilities
- Installed new high efficiency water heaters
First And Second Place
In 2017, it was announced that Broadway East had won first place in the category for lowest energy use building over 100,000 SF and Broadway West had one second place in the same category. These two North East buildings exceeded expectations, winning first and second place, surpassing even the large sky scrapers in downtown Minneapolis and all others in the city. Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges and City Council Vice President Elizabeth Glidden took time to congratulate businesses and institutions who participated in the competition.
Suntide was honored to win these awards and excited to be recognized for all of our energy efficient efforts.
Broadway East
Broadway West