Canberra Australia's Greenest Airport? Ha!

http://www.brindabellabusinesspark.com.au/bbp-buildingsforlease/1-molonglo.cfm shows what buildings aren’t tenanted yet.

The thing that has always annoyed me is part of the reason the buildings at the airport get a good environmental rating is their facilities for cyclists (showers, bike parking etc.), never mind that the airport has never made any effort to make it easy for cyclists to get to the office complex. In the current configuration, cyclists have to ride the road at the front of the airport terminal and run the risk of getting cleaned up by taxis and cars dropping off travellers none of who are looking out for a bike.

I’d like to know how many of the new buildings at Brindabella have any signed up tennants. Surely even the Snow empire must be copping a big hit from having that many brand new buildings vacant.

Hopefully staff who get a hint that their department or business is moving to the airport lobby their employers to change the decision. The traffic is awful, the bicycle/bus situation is woeful, airconditioning systems fail regularly and there is a lack of facilities. The gardens are pretty, but it feels like your face is being rubbed in it when you come home to a parched lawn – and to top it off the urinals are water saving units!!!

Ok, rant over.

arescarti42 said :

Canberra needs more office space, a problem you can’t really solve without building more buildings.

You can refurbish old buildings at about 1/10th of the environmental cost of building a new one. But the tendency is to tear these buildings down and build new ones – for example, the Cameron Offices and Benjamin Orange/Yellow in Belconnen, and the old Health buildings in Woden.

There are also buildings like Anzac Park that are vacant and could be gutted and refurbished. Also, there is a lot of office space vacant or about to become vacant – just off the top of my head, part of 2 Constitution Avenue (old tax building), all of the areas currently occupied by the Attorney-General’s Department, and (in a couple of years time) the areas currently occupied by DEEWR.

The copper piping used for irrigating the trees on the edge of the road that’s now car parking was buried under the car parking material, I’d say that wasn’t environmentally friendly.

GregW said :

Someone has a bit of a grudge, don’t they youami? For someone with seemingly no knowledge of environmentally friendly development, you sure make some bold assertions. Let me just say that despite no requirement to (federal land), the airports decision to target a 5 star ABGR ratining, didn’t come easy or cheap. Indeed these new buildings would be close to the ‘greenest’ buildings developed in Canberra. Yes I know that an airport can’t be green in the absolute but you do have to give credit where a good job was performed.

You are right, I have absolutely no qualifications or knowledge of the construction of environmentally friendly development other than my own observations and the internet and clearly I can’t accept the latter as a source of truth. I also accept that the buildings are 5 star but my point still stands that they were using sprinklers –irresepctive of whether it was bore or recycled or town water– in the middle of the day! You still need to use enegy of some sort to get the water to the sprinklers. And the % of land use for carparking in BDP is significantly high when compared to other capital city airports in Australia. Also, why are the new buildings only several stories high? I would have thought the higher the better as it would have reduced the building footprint and consolidated land use. I suspect the height is to do with development restrictions and perhaps aviation issues of some sort as I know the buildings already at BDP has an effect on wind across the runway.

It might appear environmentally friendly and give them credit for taking it into account but it is still an airport in a city that is dominated by private car use and low density commercial precincts.

Greenest? I’d believe brownest – it really is a shit airport. I thought the worst in Australia, but then I went to Launceston last year. Still Canberra is way up there in the shit airport stakes.

The airport has signs up saying it’s OK to water all that grass and stuff as they’re not using drinking water. No, they just sink bores. Due to the weird planning rules they live under, they don’t have to have their bores approved like the rest of us.

arescarti42 said :

Canberra needs more office space, a problem you can’t really solve without building more buildings.

Not according to the office vacancy rates reported this week, Civic has a large percentage of offices standing vacant, with more becoming available later this year, and the newer office buildings at the airport seem to have difficulty attracting tenants. The one built where the little river and planned park was, was completed months ago and is still vacant.

Someone has a bit of a grudge, don’t they youami? For someone with seemingly no knowledge of environmentally friendly development, you sure make some bold assertions. Let me just say that despite no requirement to (federal land), the airports decision to target a 5 star ABGR ratining, didn’t come easy or cheap. Indeed these new buildings would be close to the ‘greenest’ buildings developed in Canberra. Yes I know that an airport can’t be green in the absolute but you do have to give credit where a good job was performed.

http://cbr.webtrak-lochard.com/template/index.html

You have to wait half an hour to get the noise readings tho.