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FOUR EMBARCADERO CENTER
Earns LEED Gold Certification
for Existing Buildings Operations & Maintenance

Four Embarcadero Center, a thirty year San Francisco icon, has earned LEED Gold Certification for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance.  After a two year process, Boston Properties was thrilled to receive the news and their score of 61 that propelled them to Gold Certification.

From 2005 through 2007 Boston Properties educated themselves on the upcoming LEED opportunities. In 2009 the team led by Director of Engineering, Danny Murtagh, began pursuing LEED certification for existing buildings in San Francisco. Murtagh, who has been with Boston Properties for ten years, and affiliated with Embarcadero Center for the last thirty years, comments that keeping the certification project on track was sometimes challenging; “It is one thing to build a new building that meets LEED requirements – while certainly not easy – it is a very different process to update an existing building. Four Embarcadero Center is thirty years old. While over the years we have made energy efficient changes that definitely served us well - obtaining LEED certification required a tremendous amount of research, improvements, documentation and companywide commitment. We are extremely proud of what we have accomplished for Boston Properties and our tenants.”

Boston Properties’ team of dedicated LEED focused staff learned quickly that enlisting support from partners was going to be key to their success. They called on resources that included collective contractors, consultants and service providers.  Able Services assisted in green cleaning categories, Recology in recycling and waste stream diversion from landfill, and Environmental Building Services helped with the overall LEED process. 

The goal was to improve business sustainability in the company’s owned assets and have those improvements positively affect tenants over the long term. By operating the building in a more sustainable manner, the tenants would benefit through better stewardship of the environment and ultimately lower operating expenses with cost savings in energy, recycling, water and ongoing consumable materials use.
The commitment to being more sustainable and energy efficient is not new to Boston Properties. Over the years, the Embarcadero Center has gone from zero waste diversion toward 75% waste diversion with the implementation of an onsite recycling program that began in 2007. The building now houses on site compost collection and mixed trash sorting.  The team actively pursues energy star benchmarking that has demonstrated proven success in all of  their San Francisco high rise properties.

The prestigious Four Embarcadero Center is a portion of the larger Embarcadero Center development that was created during the 1960’s redevelopment of the waterfront area of San Francisco. Four Embarcadero Center was designed in the late 1970’s and construction went through to completion in 1981. At the time of the grand opening ceremony, the area included the high rise buildings One through Four and the Hyatt Regency Hotel, then called Five Embarcadero Center. In synergy with the Golden Gateway Center which housed office, retail and residential, the Embarcadero center added the elements of retail shops and restaurants, commercial offices and lodging - all in one closely coupled neighborhood much of which is connected by elevated pedestrian bridges.

Today, Four Embarcadero Center, at 30 years old, stands as an icon towards energy efficiency and sustainability. Four Embarcadero Center is approximately one million square feet with forty floors of office space and three levels of retail shops. The focus on sustainability continues. Boston Properties has since registered five additional San Francisco Bay Area buildings for LEED Existing Buildings and Operations Management certification.