A new five-story building with a 30,000 ft2 (2 800 m2) footprint is being designed...

According to the LEED V5 Reference Guide for Building Design and Construction, Option 1 of the Site Development - Protect or Restore Habitat credit requires restoring 25% of the site area (including the building footprint) with native or adapted vegetation 1 . To achieve exemplary performance, the project must double the credit requirements and restore 50% of the site area 2 . In this case, the site area is 100,000 ft2 (9 290 m2), so the project must restore 50,000 ft2 (4 645 m2) with vegetation. The project already has 35,000 ft2 (3 250 m2) of native vegetated open space, so it needs to add another 15,000 ft2 (1 395 m2) of vegetation. Since the on-grade surface is fully occupied by the building footprint and the asphalt parking, the only option is to incorporate a vegetated roof. Therefore, the design team will have to incorporate a native and/or adapted vegetated roof with a minimum area of 15,000 ft2 (1 395 m2). References : SS Credit Site Development - Protect or Restore Habitat, LEED V5 Reference Guide for Building Design and Construction 1 3