With the first occupants set to move into Toyota’s new Technical Center just south of Ann Arbor, MI just a few weeks from now, the company is hoping to get it certified as a “green” building. Toyota constructed the facility on the site of the former Ypsilanti Psychiatric Hospital. The company reused crushed building materials from the old buildings during the construction of roads and parking lots on the new campus. Additional building materials for the campus have been sourced from within 500 miles of Ann Arbor.

Inside the facilities waterless urinals, low emitting paints and efficient under floor ventilation systems are used. Toyota is hoping to get a gold certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED program.

By happenstance the very location of the facility also worked out to be beneficial. Toyota managed to buy the property for the facility from the state in 2006 over the objections of a developer who had offered more money. The developer wanted to build yet another sub-division with several thousand homes, which given the collapse of the real estate bubble would likely be sitting unsold and empty now. Instead Toyota will be consolidating employees from several buildings scattered around the eastern fringes of Ann Arbor along with hiring several hundred new employees. By moving everyone into a single facility, there were will be less driving from one facility to another for meetings.

EcoNewz

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