This Chick-fil-A includes water and energy efficiency features as well as air quality control and waste diversion efforts. I'm sure it helped that they were able to build the restaurant from the ground up instead of having to convert an existing space for their needs. They also received LEED points for being easily accessible via VTA buses and Light Rail.
Congrats to this Chick-fil-A and hopefully we'll see many more LEED certified restaurants in San Jose in the near future.
I'm surprised that SJ ever allowed them in. After they were outed for giving millions of dollars to groups fighting same-sex marriage, the mayors of SF, Boston and other cities have vowed to keep them out.
ReplyDeleteYeah but their food is good :)
DeleteI think most of the drama came to light after the San Jose store opened. However, anyone putting money to fight same-sex marriage is pretty much throwing money in a toilet, statistically the war is over and were beyond an inflection point where any amount of money will change the future. Equality wins out, as it has throughout history. (At least this is what I tell myself when I eat their chicken sandwiches).
DeleteNot really a "restaurant" in my opinion. Fast food, manufactured crap...
ReplyDeleteseriously, who cares about these giant bigots? and their food is gross.
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that this restaurant was able to achieve LEED Silver certification shows how the LEED system overlooks a lot of important factors (and the bar to achieve Silver is really low).
ReplyDeleteYes the restaurant may have some pretty good energy/water conservation and waste diversion features, and theoretically it's walkable from light rail, but the design of the site makes it really unlikely people will actually walk in from the street. When you get to the corner of First & Headquarters Drive, you encounter the rear-end of the restaurant, along with a giant drainage swale and the drive-through lane. To walk into the entrance, you have to go probably 500 feet out of your way, compared to a restaurant that would have been oriented to open to the corner. That's pretty much true of the entire @First retail center - looks pretty good on the inside (and at least it probably generates foot traffic from the Brocade offices and the hotel near the Fresh & Easy), but very unfriendly to walk to from the street. It's unfortunate, because there's all that new housing being built fight across First Street. And don't even get me started on how over-built that section of First Street is - making it so unfriendly to cross.
I will precede my comment by saying that I will never buy anything at a Chick-fil-A ever, I donate a lot of money for gay rights causes, and it would put a bad taste in my mouth to know that part of my money is being used to fight marriage equality like this, kind of takes the fun out of eating out.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, it is great that the restaurant has LEED silver rating (though why not go for Gold or Platinum?), it would be good if the rest of the county followed suit and decided to adopt a more environmentally friendly approach.