Goodyear’s Headquarters in Akron Earns LEED Gold Rating

By Adrian Maties, Associate Editor

Goodyear’s Global HQ

The U.S. Green Building Council recently awarded LEED Gold certification to The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.’s global headquarters building in Akron. At 639,000 square feet, it is now one of the largest LEED Gold-certified buildings in the state of Ohio.

Goodyear’s new global headquarters opened in May 2013. The seven-story building is home to nearly 2,000 employees. It is also connected to the company’s existing Innovation Center, where almost 1,000 other Goodyear employees work.

Some of the features that helped Goodyear’s building earn its LEED Gold certification include:

• Two types of roof systems – white and vegetated – to reduce heat gain;
• Using low-flow plumbing fixtures that allow for a water-use reduction of 42 percent;
• 53 percent of the project’s site area is vegetated, open space that features native grasses requiring little watering or tending;
• Almost 90 percent of the wood in the building is from sustainable sources.

According to Goodyear, the building also earned bonus points during the certification process, thanks to its use of creative design elements, such as embedding a triple-gas blend within the layers of glass walls to save energy, using 100-year-old dredged Ohio River logs, and recycling 95 percent of construction waste.

“We are proud of this designation of our new global headquarters as a LEED Gold-rated building,” Richard Kramer, Goodyear chairman & CEO, said in a statement. “This certification represents a further step in our commitment to sustainability and reinforces Goodyear’s shared value of caring for our environments and communities.”

Photo credit: www.goodyear.com