STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

The Limelight Hotel Ketchum sports an automation system that turns off the heat when guests leave one of its 99 rooms.

It has a system that captures 100 percent of storm water, filtering it onsite and sending it directly into the ground without it entering the municipal storm system.

It uses 20 percent less water than the average building its size, and its energy performance is 17 percent better than code.

All this and more earned the Limelight Hotel Ketchum a brief half-hour ceremony this month during which a representative of the U.S. Green Building Council presented Mark Vogele of the Aspen Skiing Company a LEED silver certification.

LEED is the leading green building rating system across the globe.

“Anyone can say they built a green building, but the challenge is to have transparency, to be able to prove to the community what is in the DNA of a building and why it’s environmentally sensitive,” the USGBC’s Charlie Woodruff told those assembled in the lobby of the hotel.

“A lot of work goes into having a durable, healthy building for the people who come here,” Woodruff added. “This is going to be a great asset for the community for decades to come.”

Sharon Grant, the LEED consultant from Ketchum, noted that the Limelight scored 23 of 26 points for being sustainable. That’s almost impossible to achieve in rural areas, she said.

Among the contributing factors was Mountain Rides “amazing transportation system,” which offers free bus rides around town so those staying at the hotel never have to use their cars. The hotel offers bicycle storage and showers for employees who wish to bike. And it’s an easy walk to the pharmacy and other venues.

“Many rural communities do not have the walkability you do here,” said Grant.

To the town’s credit, LEED Silver was a requirement of the project, noted Mark Vogele, project manager for the Limelight Hotel Ketchum.

“So we’re not bragging about that. We had to do it,” he said. “What we’re proud of is where we went above and beyond the code, above and beyond LEED.”

The hotel, which opened a year ago in December 2016, features:

• R 42 walls
• R 70 roof, which Vogele called “insane”
• Double pane, low-e windows with a whole-window U value of .45
• Advanced mechanical system with condensing gas boilers tied to a building automation systems that turns off the heat when guest leave one of its 99 rooms
• Glass that uses a heat-rejecting technology to block solar gain and reduce air conditioning needs in summer.
• Built-in shades that help reduce air conditioning needs in summer.
• A system that captures 100 percent of storm water and processes it onsite, filtering it and sending it directly into the ground without entering the municipal storm system.
• High recycled content materials, including roof, carpeting and ceramic tiles, as well as certified reclaimed wood on the outside. There are no materials with toxic formaldehyde or any volatile organic compounds.

It’s a really, really good building,” said Vogle.

“This is an incredibly healthy space,” added Grant. “We worked hard to ensure the carpet, wood and other materials would not emit toxins and that the paint had low zero emissions. And there’s no smoking inside or near the building.”

Additionally, Aspen Skiing Company got the City of Ketchum to waive a requirement to snowmelt the city block with natural gas. Instead, it uses local workers to shovel walks so no fossil fuels have to be burned.

The hotel also uses environmentally safe cleaning supplies. It places glasses, rather, than plastic, in all bathrooms. And it uses soap, shampoo and lotion refillable dispensers, rather than the traditional 1.5-ounce bottles.

And it seeks to source 10 to 15 percent of ingredients locally, while using canned beverages in the kitchen rather than bottles because of the lack of glass recycling in the region.

Ketchum Mayor Nina Jonas praised the Limelight Hotel for going beyond the requirements of the city.

“You’ve set an excellent example for us all,” she said.

Jonas noted that the City of Ketchum, Limelight Hotel and Aspen Ski Company all recognize the importance of snow to Sun Valley’s livelihood and the threat climate change exacerbated by man’s doings poses.

“We are all members of Protect Our Winters and understand that conservation of our natural resources must take place on the local level to make a difference towards a global climate solution,” she said.

Jonas noted that the City of Ketchum has enthusiastically embraced policy changes in support of a healthy mountain ecosystem.

It formed the Ketchum Energy Advisory Committee, which has established ambitious energy conservation goals to be reached by 2030, including a 50 percent per capital reduction in energy use within the Ketchum community and a 75 percent reduction in energy use within city operations.

In the past few years, the city installed solar panels on the roof of the Oregon Wagon Museum. To date those panels have generated more than 51,000 kilowatt-hours, offsetting 31 tons of CO2 emissions, or the equivalent of emissions from 4,524 gallons of gasoline.

The city also waived fees associated with solar installations and added an electric vehicle charging station at the Oregon Wagon Museum.

The city installed solar-powered street lights. It enacted a green building code to reduce energy consumption. And its water and wastewater department has save more than 2 million kilowatt hours—a savings of more than $100,000—by improving water conservation and energy consumption by removing inefficient and leaky pipes and investing in a water-reuse system.

“I’m passionate about the environment and doing our part to protect what has been gifted us,” said the outgoing mayor. “We must continue to protect our watershed, the clean air we breathe and the forests that surround us.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Ketchum has one LEED Gold residence. The house on River Run Drive was built by Idaho Mountain Builders just before the 2008 recession, noted Rebecca Bundy, who served as the city staff liaison as the Limelight Hotel was being built.