BOMA's Purtell on Sustainability

It was hard to tell there is a recession going on at last month’s United States Green Buildings Council in Boston. The conference had an attendance of over 25,000 people, and the main hall’s trade show was packed. One observer at the conference was Dick Purtell, BOMA’s chair, who is also a Grubb & Ellis portfolio manager. “We want to show our political leaders that we can do this on a voluntary basis as opposed to some of the mandates we might be facing,” he says of the industry’s proactive approach to sustainability. GlobeSt.com spoke to him about the conference and where green is going in commercial real estate.

GlobeSt.com: What was your biggest surprise at Greenbuild?

Purtell: The most impressive part of it is the number of people that attend that event and the fact that, at least at this point, it doesn’t appear that the economy is having an impact on what they are doing. Part of that could be that a lot of this had been planned before the worst news came down, but I was impressed with the passion you see out of that group and the shear numbers. On the tradeshow the exhibitors are there from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. selling and working the crowd. I was there for two days of it and was never on the floor when there weren’t a lot of people. I’m sure the exhibitors were happy with the traffic.