Plaza Center East Selected for Green Building of America Award
Plaza Center East has been selected to win a Green Building of America Award and will be featured in the upcoming Midwest Real Estate & Construction Review-Green Success Stories Edition. The publication is highly utilized by State, County and City Economic Development groups to highlight the vitality of their respected communities.
Designed by GMB Architecture + Engineering for Eighth Street Partners, LLC, and constructed by Lakewood Construction, the building concept was to create a LEED® certified multi-use office/retail building to enhance the current downtown and be interactive with the adjacent plaza space.
In July of 2009, the USGBC certified the building as LEED Gold CS, two levels above the original target, and the first multi-use office/retail building to be awarded LEED Gold in the Holland vicinity. The plaza itself is conceived as a multi-generational living room for the downtown. It is master planned as a 4-sided urban edged space that engages 8th Street with a pedestrian crosswalk and extends to the historic City Hall and Fire Barn structure to the south. It provides a large open area for concerts, street performers, and lunch goers. Two fountains were designed in the space. One is a more formal pool at the street edge which is visible up and down 8th Street; the other is an interactive splash area with in-ground jets and laminar flow nozzles.