Bullitt Center

The Bullitt Center is a commercial office building at the northern edge of the Central District neighborhood, near Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington. It was officially opened on Earth Day, April 22, 2013. It is designed to be the greenest commercial building in the world when completed in 2012, qualifying for classification as a "Living Building" by the International Living Future Institute.It was built by the Bullitt Foundation, a non-profit group based in Seattle that focuses on urban ecology. The foundation will be a tenant, occupying half of one floor in the six story building, with additional commercial tenants occupying the rest of the building.Construction costs for the six-story, 52000sqft building were $18.5 million, or $355 per square foot. Including land, the cost is $30 million; for this price the building will provide "tenant ready" space.The Bullitt Center is designed to have a 250-year lifespan. With construction begun in July 2011, the building is designed to be energy and carbon neutral, with a water and sewage processing system that allows the building to be independent of municipal water and sewage systems. Energy neutrality is achieved with a large solar panel array on the roof of the building along with energy conservation measures that will cut the building's energy consumption to approximately 1/3 of a typical office building of similar size. Although the building will be connected to the electricity grid and may at times draw more power than it produces (especially during the winter), at other times it should produce enough surplus to "repay" such withdrawals, yielding annual energy neutrality.