JLL office achieves Silver level WELL Certification for offices at 28 Liberty St., Manhattan

Manhattan, NY JLL has achieved WELL Certification at the Silver level for its offices at 28 Liberty St. by the International WELL Building Institute through its WELL Building Standard, the building standard focused on enhancing peoples’ health and well-being through the built environment.

JLL relocated its office to the 30th floor of the class A, 2.2 million s/f landmarked building mid-2016. The new space was designed to showcase the firm’s commitment to sustainability, energy efficiency, return on investment, health and wellness. The space also meets the U.S. Green Building Council standards for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold Certification.

“JLL’s new offices in Lower Manhattan demonstrate the firm’s strong commitment to supporting human health, well-being and comfort in commercial buildings,” said Dana Robbins Schneider, managing director and head of JLL’s Energy and Sustainability Projects group in the northeast. “There is no better way to understand the impact of incorporating human health advocacy into everyday real estate decisions than to do it ourselves for our own staff. We are also actively working with a number of clients to implement the WELL Building StandardTM and wellness initiatives in their spaces.”

The firm has held educational sessions on the WELL Building StandardTM with several large corporate clients. The first step to incorporating health and well-being into a client’s real estate decisions is to conduct a feasibility study for new or existing spaces and buildings of all types, from schools to offices to residential.

“By putting people at the center of design and operations decisions for their own offices as well as through their work with clients is how JLL has become one of the most respected leaders in the global real estate community,” said IWBI chairman and CEO Rick Fedrizzi.  “The market transformation to more sustainable practices through green buildings is experiencing its second wave as we are now using our buildings to transform human sustainability.  We congratulate JLL on both their WELL and LEED certifications.”

The effort to achieve WELL Certification and LEED Gold certification was led by Robbins Schneider, along with Hrisa Gatzoulis, senior project manager, and Corey Greer, vice president. 

Created through seven years of rigorous research and development working with leading physicians, scientists, and industry professionals, the WELL Building StandardTM is a performance-based certification system that marries best practices in design and construction with evidence-based scientific research. JLL’s offices at 28 Liberty Street  earned the distinction based on seven categories of building performance — air, water, light, nourishment, fitness, comfort and mind — and achieved a Silver level rating. 

In its efforts to achieve certification, JLL implemented stringent cleaning and ventilation standards and installed equipment to provide high-quality indoor air and water for everyone at its 28 Liberty St. office. Visual and physical ergonomic systems were put into place that included ensuring all computer screens and workstations were fully adjustable in terms of height and distance from the user, and could alternate between seated and standing positions.

The firm also paid significant attention to lighting, with all workstations and conference rooms located on the office perimeter allowing for direct views to the outdoors. JLL installed task lighting with adjustable color temperature and built-in occupancy sensors and electric glare control was incorporated directly in the design of the office space.

WELL is grounded in a body of evidence-based research that explores the connection between the buildings where we spend approximately 90 percent of our time, and the health and wellness impacts on us as occupants of these buildings. To be awarded WELL Certification by IWBI, JLL’s offices at 28 Liberty St. underwent rigorous testing and a final evaluation carried out by Green Business Certification Inc., which is the third-party certification body for WELL, to ensure it met all WELL Certified Silver performance requirements.