Sustainable Industries Magazine Review RATING: With its soft hardbound cover, “The Green Building Bottom Line: The Real Cost of Sustainable Building” has the look and feel of a school textbook. But the impetus is more personal than institutional. Written by colleagues at Melaver Inc., an Atlanta-based development company, the book resulted from a presentation given at the 2005 Greenbuild conference focused on building a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified shopping mall. The issue of overcoming mistakes seems central to “The Green Building Bottom Line.” At the same time, the book provides a wealth of practical information, particularly in the second half (the first deals with values), where the focus includes everything from tenant regulations to crunching construction numbers to the effect of sustainable design on staff turnover. The book isn’t a revolutionary tome about sustainability with rhetoric or clarion calls to action. Instead, the authors have created a manual for pragmatically making dreams of sustainability a reality. - Brian Libby, Sustainable Industries Magazine Link
Greener Buildings Magazine Martin Melaver and Phyllis Mueller provide a detailed accounting of the costs associated with green building. In this book, a group of individuals with experience in various fields, without backgrounds in green building, worked together to develop five LEED certified projects. They document the costs associated with each aspect of these projects, which range from a LEED renovation of a National Historic Register property to the country's first all-retail LEED core and shell project. From attracting financing for a LEED development, working with building professionals (architects, general contractors, sub-contractors) to coordinate a LEED project, marketing a green project, to negotiating the green elements of a lease with a prospective tenant, the authors bring readers to the table with the entire Melaver development team as it tackles the variety of challenges involved in sustainable development.   - Greener Buildings Magazine - Link    Founder of Greener by Design Conference
Building Green.com Martin Melaver, CEO of developer Melaver, Inc., traces the roots of this book to the 2005 Greenbuild conference, where he and seven colleagues presented the lessons learned from their green retail development, Abercorn Commons. The green building industry is still hungry for those lessons, particularly financial payback information and marketing experiences. Melaver and Mueller have collected ten chapters on these subjects, relying on experts in various fields to present information in a clear manner. These chapters cover everything from financing and marketing to human resources practices. Although the book is not pretty—the layout is more utilitarian than aesthetic—it is certainly useful, and well worth a place on most bookshelves.  Link
World Architecture News.com What are the real costs and real benefits of building green?. As any builder knows, cost estimation and reality are often two very different things. "The Green Building Bottom Line" makes the case for green building by providing the insights and data that demonstrate the true costs and benefits of building green. It's a why to and a how to that explores everything from the ground up. "The Green Building Bottom Line" puts an entire development team at the table to better understand both the issues encountered and what's behind the perceived price premium for building green. This candid and transparent account explores every aspect of green development on groundbreaking projects, from the nation's first all-retail LEED core and shell project to an innovative multitenanted LEED-Existing Buildings office project, to a mixed-use hotel-retail-condo project in a transitional urban market. The authors focus on such issues as values, culture, life-cycle costs, insurance, financing, coordinating a team, marketing, and negotiating leases. Includes: Detailed case studies of green-building projects, start to finish. Information on financial, legal, and operational aspects of the job. The real-world costs of green building-not unrealistic estimates. A behind-the-scenes look at the LEED building process. Unique insight from those who have actually done the work. . The Green Building Bottom Line covers:  Economical and ecological benefits Auditing sustainability in existing buildings Financial benefits of green tenancy Loan analysis Insurance underwriting Expense reduction Writing a green lease. Converting an existing building Green retail Brokering sustainabilityMarketing HR practices and processes.   Link
See all books in the McGraw Hill Greensource Series:  Link