Sustainability Roundtable, Inc. (“SR Inc”), the leader in shared-cost research and consulting on best practices in more sustainable business, recognized The Tower Companies as the Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable’s (SBER) Outstanding Landlord of 2014.  SR Inc recognized The Tower Companies for its industry leadership in developing and driving optimization efforts towards more sustainable real estate and operations. 

Year over year, SR Inc confidentially scores and assists dozens of world-leading companies in developing and managing strategies to move their operations to greater sustainability. The Tower Companies moved into the top leadership echelon among landlords in SR Inc’s 2014 anonymized assessment. The Tower Companies was the top scorer in SR Inc’s annually more demanding five-component scoring of portfolio-wide management practices and implementation.  The Tower Companies showed special strength in implementation.

“As a regional owner, The Tower Companies demonstrates with unequivocal clarity that you need not be a global or even national investor and owner of commercial real estate to invest in the superior returns of more sustainable real estate,” noted SR Inc’s CEO & Chairman James Boyle. He continued, “The Tower Companies’ top leadership in portfolio-wide optimization efforts towards greater sustainability is all too rare among regional real estate owners and investors. Therefore, their leadership is especially important as an example to the vast majority of real estate owners and investors who invest regionally.  Owners and investors throughout the U.S. could learn a great deal from The Tower Companies about why taking a portfolio-wide approach makes great business sense.”

The quantitative scoring of The Tower Companies’ leadership in management practices was confirmed by its clear qualitative commitment to more sustainably high-performing real estate. SR Inc recognized The Tower Companies as the SBER Outstanding Landlord of 2014 due to its exceptional leadership in enterprise-wide sustainability and, specifically, its:

• Leveraging of a compact regional footprint to drive to  leadership in greater resource productivity in energy, waste & water

• Continued efforts as an EPA Green Power Partner, working consistently to reduce the company’s impact on the global environment by setting annual reduction goals and completing a corporate-wide and publically available inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions each year since 2005

• 100% green cleaning requirements and its Real Time Energy Management Program that has realized an average savings of 15% over 3 years

• Carbon Neutrality by offsetting 100% of GHG emissions through Carbon Credits and Renewable Energy Credits (RECs)

• LEED Certification of 90% of the Portfolio, 4 out of 14 projects Platinum certified, 15% of employees LEED APs or Green Associates, and completion of the 1st LEED® multi-family apartments in the U.S.

• Recognition as an EPA ENERGY STAR Leader for Certification of 85% of Portfolio and an Average Portfolio Rating of 80

• Client engagement efforts through use of “green teams”, unique amenity offerings, and innovative programming

• Systemized approach to more sustainable leasing and Tenant Improvement practices, and a systemized procurement process focused on buying only more sustainable products

• Impressive management and achievements as a regional landlord  in competition with national owner-investors

“Tower is honored receive this recognition and to be selected among a group of top leaders in the industry; it’s been a real pleasure to work with the Sustainability Roundtable team and our peers on various projects” said Eugenia Gregorio, Director of Corporate Responsibility for The Tower Companies.  “One of our company goals is to ‘lead by example on environmental sustainability’ and it’s inspiring to know that others view our efforts as being successful too.  We plan to continue this leadership role through industry collaboration and hope to encourage others to join us.”

About The Tower Companies:  For three generations, the family-owned Tower Companies has maintained a commitment to responsible development and envisions a world where buildings inspire and enrich the lives of their occupants, and create positive social change.  The green building leader owns, develops, and manages over 5 million square feet in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area consisting of office buildings, office parks, lifestyle centers, regional malls, eco-progressive live-work-play communities and hotels with over 8,000,000 SF in the development pipeline. By the mid-1990s, before “green” was mainstream, the company was already focused on smart growth and ecologically sensitive building practices, leading the market with innovative ideas and completely re-engineering how buildings are designed and constructed. Today, Tower Companies is humbled to be recognized as an international authority in the industry, and to have been honored for its commitment to sustainability and energy independence by numerous national organizations and federal agencies, including US Green Building Council, US Department of Energy and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

About SR Inc: Sustainability Roundtable, Inc. (SR Inc) is a private, mission driven, research and consulting company based in Cambridge, MA. SR Inc’s mission is to accelerate the development and adoption of best practices in more sustainable business. Since 2009, SR Inc has advised companies who own or lease more than one billion square feet of real estate and who are leading the global move to more sustainable real estate and operations. SR Inc provides Member companies with confidential annual assessments and management recommendations and helps them develop strategies, set goals, assess solutions, measure progress and report results internally and externally for more sustainable real estate and operations locally and globally. For information regarding Membership in Sustainability Roundtable, Inc please visit our website at www.sustainround.com or call us at 617-682-3631.

Sustainability Roundtable, Inc.

Sustainability Roundtable, Inc.

Sustainability Roundtable, Inc. (SR Inc) is the leader in outsourced Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) assistance. SR Inc’s Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable (SBER) provides confidential, membership-based, Strategic Advisory & Support Services to help management teams set goals, drive progress, and report results as they lead their organizations to greater sustainability. SR Inc’s Renewable Energy Procurement Services (REPS) team is led by 20+ year experts focused on corporate renewable energy strategy development, markets, law, financing, technology, transaction structuring, negotiation services and procurement. For information regarding SR Inc’s Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable service and/or SR Inc’s Renewable Energy Procurement Services, visit our website at www.sustainround.com. 

More from Sustainability Roundtable, Inc.