JCPenney gets ready to go green

FAIRVIEW, Tex. JCPenney will be the first anchor store to open at the one-million-square-foot Village of Fairview, north of Dallas. Following the ribbon cutting ceremony on July 31, the 115,000-square-foot Penney store will be the first in the nation designed to LEED-certified standards.

Gar Herring, president of Village of Fairview developer MGHerring Group, says the decision to go green was made by the Plano, TX-based JCPenney. "They wanted to make the jump into the LEED-certification world and felt that the location of Village of Fairview near its headquarters and the prominence of the project would provide a good opportunity," said Herring. Village of Fairview is at Stacey Road and U.S. Highway 75, approximately 10 minutes away from JCPenney's headquarters.

He acknowledges there were a few challenges on the development side when it came to building a LEED-certified store. The main issue, he says, were the points JC Penney needed for certification, but most of it was fairly easy to coordinate.