The building at 1400 Page Mill in Stanford Research Park is the manifestation of passion meeting knowledge—particularly knowledge at the leading edge of sustainable commercial real estate development. Or, we could say, LEEDing edge.
The property at the corner of Page Mill and Hanover has been in the same family since 1959, back when Stanley Wells Good, Jr., who worked in commercial real estate, built and leased a new office building at the site. Having recently welcomed the third generation to the Hanover Page Mill firm, Jim Castle Gaither, Jr. (the son of Good’s son-in-law’s son) has ushered in a new era of sustainability.
Jim, Jr.—having earned his MS and BS in the biological sciences from Stanford University and his PhD in ecology from the University of California at Davis—has always been interested in the environment and the interplay between ecology and economics. He would go on to found the Northern Sierra Project for The Nature Conservancy. No surprise that, when he joined Hanover Page Mill, he brought with him his passion for sustainability and the environment.
When the Hanover Page Mill team set out to plan the new spec office building that would rise where Stanley’s original building sat, they wanted to be bold. They wanted to push the envelope of sustainability and, ultimately, strive to lead the entire commercial real estate industry forward. At the same time, they wanted to ensure the wellbeing and comfort of future tenants, while also enabling long-term economic security for the building.
Push the envelope they did. The building is LEED Platinum, the highest LEED certification available. To achieve this elite status, the property had to reach the most rigorous bar of LEED’s carbon, energy, water, waste, transportation, materials, health, and indoor environmental quality standards.
1400 Page Mill boasts an advanced and multi-faceted, ultra-insulation system, a high-efficiency VAV HVAC system, and LED lighting with automatic daylight harvesting. The building and parking area are almost entirely covered with solar panels, which provide most of the building’s energy needs. And the design itself was intended for comfort and efficiency. Thoughtful architecture maximizes natural sunlight to reduce artificial light needs. A series of features were implemented—such as aluminum-and-glass sunshades, ranging from 12 to 30 inches deep—to limit indoor temperature swings and thereby minimize the need for more typical heating and air conditioning use.
Compared to the average building, 1400 Page Mill is 30% more energy efficient, 55% more landscape water efficient, 40% more indoor water efficient, and circulates 30% more fresh air. These impressive statistics and the building’s series of innovative sustainability strategies earned 1400 Page Mill official Net-Zero Electric (NZE) status.
Despite their ambitious sustainability goals, the Hanover Page Mill team is aware that aesthetics play a pivotal role in the wellbeing and attitudes of those who occupy a space. They hold design and beauty in equal regard to sustainability—a fact that caught the attention of law firm Morgan Lewis. Its leaders saw alignment between their passion for technological innovation and superior client service and that of Hanover Page Mill. The law firm, whose areas of focus meld well with the needs of Research Park companies, signed on to be 1400 Page Mill’s primary tenant. Seventy of the firm’s lawyers and their staff were among the first welcomed into the building when it officially opened in 2017.