February 5, 2010, 02:00 PM ET

Showers for Bike Riders Earn Yale LEED Points, but Bike Riders Are Locked Out

Rudolph Hall

No sooner had Yale University posted a news release saying it had earned platinum-level LEED certification for its new forestry building, Kroon Hall, than the Yale Daily News uncovered a dirty little secret about two other LEED-certified buildings at Yale: They were built with showers and changing rooms for bike commuters, which helped them earn their LEED certification, but bike commuters had never been given access to them. Nor had anyone else.

One of the buildings is Paul Rudolph Hall (above; Chronicle photograph), formerly called the Art & Architecture Building. It reopened last year after a top-to-bottom renovation and expansion by Gwathmey Sielgel Associates that earned a gold-level LEED certification. The other facility is the 2007 Sculpture Building, by Kieran Timberlake, which earned LEED platinum. Besides the showers, the Daily News said Rudolph Hall also has an indoor bike-storage room, which was unlocked on Tuesday after the paper's reporter asked about it.

But the showers? No such luck. The director of facilities for the School of Art, Sal Schaivone, told the Daily News that he had no plan to unlock those in the Sculpture Building, where students have studio space that they already spend a lot of time in. “If they had access to it, people would be living in the building,” he said. Over in Rudolph Hall, which houses the School of Architecture, an associate dean said the showers wouldn't be unlocked because there's no way to lock them from inside to guarantee privacy.

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Comments

1. princeton67 - February 05, 2010 at 08:20 pm

The solution to energy conservation: design a LEED certifiable building that denies access to its users. All those energy-wasting humans kept out. Perfect!

2. la4097237 - February 06, 2010 at 01:07 am

If they are enjoying smoking a little dope in their studios, what makes the high potentates at Yale believe the students are worried about privacy in the showers?

3. dthornton9 - February 08, 2010 at 10:13 am

Political correctness continues to run amok!

4. lee77 - February 08, 2010 at 12:26 pm

Who builds showers without locks on the inside?!?

5. dpn33 - February 08, 2010 at 12:57 pm

What was the point of building the showers if they had no intention of letting anyone use them? Talk about waste.

6. phdbd - February 09, 2010 at 12:48 pm

What sort of benefits accrue from possesing a LEED platinum status building?

Revoke them immediately. Order a desist order on the departments from using said status in any marketing, and force them to reprint any promotional materials heralding their new found 'greenery'.

Or force them to open the facilities.

And install a couple dollars worth of hardware on those shower doors if Yale is so crime ridden.