BURBANK, Calif.--Imagine walking into a white-walled hangar with floors resembling polished grey granite. The shiny floor reflects sunlight cascading through rooftop windows/panels, obviating the need for fluorescent lights. More than 95% of regularly occupied spaces, even center offices, are daylit--connecting the indoors and outdoors.

In this climate-controlled space, excess moisture evaporates and temperatures inside the hangar facility average 70 degrees F without air conditioning, even when temperatures outside soar to 110 degrees F. Picture this comfortable space, where four large private jets undergo light maintenance, and where electricity always is free.

The maintenance staff, happier and healthier in the comfortable environment that has fewer toxins than comparable facilities, helped design the optimized space.

This may sound like a maintenance director's vision for a new Hollywood film setting, but it actually is a real, functioning hangar and maintenance operation just north of Hollywood, in southern California.

Welcome to Hangar 25, the first LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Platinum-rated aviation maintenance hangar in the U.S. Besides being only the 81st building rated to LEED Platinum, the highest category of the U.S. Green Building Council's rating system, this means Hangar 25 is one of the most sustainable, if not the most sustainable, MRO facilities in the world.

Shangri-La Construction built the $17 million hangar ($275/sq. ft.), its inaugural project, using a business model tied to LEED. Tim Donovan, Shangri-La's COO, said Hangar 25, which opened in December, is proof that sustainable and energy-efficient design can produce cost savings, while being aesthetically pleasing.

Avjet holds a 25-year lease on the space designed to hold a BBJ, a 757-200 and two large Gulfstreams at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, an airport with views of the Santa Ana Mountains and a beneficiary of their breezes. The scenic setting seems to provide an appropriate backdrop for Hangar 25, an edifice that should inspire aviation facilities--from maintenance hangars to airports--to think about building or retrofitting with environmentally friendly construction practices.

"Hangar 25 uses 60% less water than comparable buildings," said Donovan. It doesn't have an electric bill, and it produced enough surplus clean electricity in January to power 20 homes, he said.

"Our current operating costs are two cents per square foot compared to a traditional facility of 20 cents per square foot," said Donovan, in mid-February.

Gaining these operational efficiencies doesn't come at an increased cost--green construction can equal that of conventional building. The environmentally friendly procedures also can be applied to retrofits.