I’ve already paid several visits to Nationals Park, the brand-new baseball stadium in downtown Washington, DC. It’s a state-of-the-art facility, has all the amenities a fan could want in a stadium, and is a great place to watch a game.
What I didn’t know, however, was that it’s also perhaps the most environmentally-friendly stadium in all of professional sports. Check out this piece from Outside magazine’s recent “Green Issue.”
The new park uses 37% less water than comparable stadiums, uses 21 percent less power, is engineered to minimize strain on the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers, and is one of the most public transportation-friendly parks I’ve ever been to, within easy walking distance of two metro stations (in addition to bus stops, shuttle services, and bike parking). Moreover, the park has a very good chance of becoming LEED certified – which would put it in a class by itself among American sports arenas.
Professional sports is not an area where one usually expects to see pioneering environmental practices, but that’s just what we’re seeing in the new Nationals Park. Now, let’s hope that the team’s record on the field can match its environmental record off of it!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under Eco-Business Strategies, Pop Culture . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Good information - our site only has pictures of when the building was started, but this information is good to know! LEED certified will be a huge topic over the next few years as more start to adopt the practice.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Reduced water use is nice, the energy efficieny operating the ball park is certainly worthwile. BUT
the BIGGEST and MOST IMPORTANT green design item at the new Nationals ballpark is the Metro connections that you touched on.
A majority of the fans (and workers) can come to games on DC Metro, getting the non-oil equivalent of 800 mpg ! I believe $21 million was spent expanding the Navy Yard Metro station, a block from the stadium, to handle the crowds.
George W. Bush, when he built the “BallPark in Arlington” before getting into politics, could have built his ballpark along a current, or at least planned, DART line, but he chose the all oil burning solution. A very “brown” stadium, not green at all, just like this administration.
Of course, DC Metro could be stimulating the economy today, and working on saving 20,000 to 25,000 barrels of oil per day, by building 800 mpg non-oil transportation to Tyson’s Corner and Dulles if it were not for a last minute blind side veto by GWB’s FTA.
The Interstate Highway system was built with 90% federal funding, but GWB would not provide 18% federal funding for this important oil saving infrastructure that will be useful for over a hundred years.
Best Hopes for a Responsible Revolution within the Republican Party for the 2010 and 2012 elections,
Alan Drake
April 17th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Excellent observations, Whit, and I am happy to report that the stadium has now indeed been certified as LEED-silver. Its prominence should be a big boon to the practice of green building.
I couldn’t agree more, by the way, that the environment is not the exclusive province of political liberals. The practice of “conservation,” after all, is inherently conservative. And there are aspects where the private sector is ahead of government on these issues; not enough of them, to be sure, but where they exist it is important that we applaud them. I enjoyed poking through your blog.
Kaid Benfield
Director, Smart Growth Program
Natural Resources Defense Council
April 17th, 2008 at 12:11 am
p.s. I couldn’t agree more with Alan Drake’s observation that “the BIGGEST and MOST IMPORTANT green design item at the new Nationals ballpark is the Metro connections that you touched on.” In most cases the location of a building has a greater effect on its overall environmental performance than the building itself.