A business park will be built to environmentally friendly standards near a former contaminated site in Henrico County.

The Parham Forest West development, at the corner of East Parham Road and Ackley Avenue, is near a Superfund site. Federal and state funds were used to clean up the pollution -- contamination caused by a former wood treatment plant dating back to the 1950s.

Plans call for 12 warehouse and office buildings ranging from 6,000 to 12,000 square feet built to LEED standards.

LEED -- Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design -- is a rating system administered by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainable building and construction.

"With the increasing cost of energy, we thought it might make sense to do it this way," said the developer, Hugh Tierney, president of Empire Development in Virginia Beach. "A lot of large companies and even government are starting to gravitate to LEED requirements."

Tierney bought the land for the business park after the nearby Superfund site was cleaned up. Remediation efforts included removal of contaminated soil and replacing it with clean fill, refilling a holding point and revegetation of wetlands.

Total development costs for Parham Forest West are estimated at $9.8 million, he said. "We're dramatically improving the environment, putting acreage back on the tax rolls and laying the groundwork for environmentally friendly buildings."

The cost to build to LEED standards is 1 percent to 4 percent more than conventional construction, said Don Guthrie, a LEED-certified architect with McKinney & Co. in Richmond.

The extra expense will be recouped in a few

years through energy and water savings, Guthrie said. Building plans call for the use of recycled or sustainable materials, reflective white roofs, highefficiency heating and air systems and energy-efficient windows.

Henrico County approved the plans last week.

"The developer did everything we asked for to make it a viable site; no one objected," said Chris Archer, the Planning Commission member from the Fairfield District.

Ground will be broken in March, with the buildings ready by October or November, Tierney said.

The buildings will be sold unfinished, so LEED certification can be achieved only after they are built out.

"We're taking a significant piece of land that sat dormant for many years and putting it back into productive use," said Jerry Samford, an environmental consultant with Troutman Sanders law firm who worked with the developer. Contact Carol Hazard at (804) 775-8023 or chazard@timesdispatch.com.