Leadership of BOMA International is advancing its troops on a variety of fronts. But regardless of the issue—whether it be energy efficiency, carried interest or mandated sustainability thresholds—one overarching goal guides the group’s efforts: to increase the freedom and capability of its 17,000 members in 93 local associations to chart their own course for success.

A prime case is the Obama Administration’s Better Buildings Initiative, launched early last year in part to make commercial properties 20% more efficient by 2020. “It makes sense and it dovetails nicely with the BOMA Seven-Point Challenge,” comments president and COO Henry Chamberlain, explaining that the goal of the challenge actually exceeds the Obama plan both in terms of threshold percentage and timeframe, seeking a 30% reduction by the end of this year.

But the two programs are not totally aligned, and as chairman Boyd R. Zoccola explains, a major sticking point comes in the incentives the government program sets out. “We’d like to see more robust and reasonable incentives,” he says, holding up the Empire State Building’s recent $13-million energy retrofit as a prime example. Zoccola, who is also EVP at the Indianapolis-based Hokanson Cos., says that while the retrofit “hit the ball out of the park,” and cut consumption by over 40%, the upgrades didn’t qualify for a single federal tax incentive. “The bar is simply set too high.”

Joseph W. Markling, who takes over when Zoccola’s term ends during the BOMA Every Building Conference & Expo in Seattle this June (see sidebar, page 68), says the impact of too-high thresholds will be lack of interest. Even arbitrary standards sound good to the untrained ear, he says, “and the incentives sound like a lot of money. But we need incentives that are meaningful and substantial. Otherwise, if people know they can’t get to 40%, they simply won’t try. Incentives have to work for both sides. Every building is different.”

“Depending on your portfolio, your tenant mix and the type and age of the buildings, there can be a lot of solutions to produce a high-performance product,” agrees Chamberlain. “There are a lot of ways to get that done—Energy Star, LEED, the BOMA 360 program and all sorts of management practices you can leverage up. But to make any one of them a generic bar for the industry to clear just doesn’t make sense.”

...For the rest of the story, go to the May 2012 issue of Real Estate Forum.