Just found some interesting research that you might want to take a look at:

Driving to Green Buildings: The Transportation Energy Intensity of Buildings

read the article here: http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm?fileName=160901a.xml

This article, from BuildingGreen.com basically says green buildings are great . . . but not when people have to drive a long way to get to them. Here’s another good reason for people to work downtown!  Especially because, as the article states,”most experts put density at or near the top of the list of measures for reducing vehicle use.”

But the article also points out an issue we have in our downtown: when a business gets too big, it’s often hard for them to find the space to expand in the downtown. I know of at least one growing high tech business that is currently downtown that is facing this problem. Any thoughts on this?

There’s also a lot of other great information in this article. It even has a comparison of the Transportation and Operating Energy use for a typical office building. The article finds that on average, transportation energy exceeds operating energy by 30%!