Living Laboratory

The Cortex name is synonymous with “innovation,” and there is an expectation that visitors would see these innovations taking place. In addition, tapping into the regional assets could create a number of partnership opportunities to utilize the space within the District as a testing ground for new and emerging sustainability technologies.

Landscape Architecture Foundation Results

Over the course of the 2023 growing season, Cortex collaborated with the design team from SWT Design and The University of Minnesota research team as they compiled data for a Case Study Investigation on the Cortex Commons. Click Below to read their findings…

Beginning with a Baseline

For Cortex and our development partners in the District to reach our net-zero goals, we must first understand what our greenhouse gas emissions are in order to measure our progress toward reducing them. Greenhouse gas inventories identify the major sources of greenhouse gases and measure how much they pollute.

St. Louis is extremely lucky to have guidelines or Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) passed by the City of St. Louis Board of Aldermen and signed into law by then Mayor Lyda Krewson in May 2020. St. Louis became the fourth jurisdiction in the country and the first in the Midwest to mandate significant reductions in building energy use with this ambitious law.

• Municipal, commercial, institutional and residential buildings over 50,000 square feet must comply
• The City has set an energy performance standard for each building type based on local benchmarking data
• Building owners have the flexibility to decide what combination of physical or operational improvements can best achieve the standard through May 2025 to reduce their energy use to comply
• Buildings comply by meeting the standard set for their building type, as measured in site energy use intensity (EUI) normalized for weather and operating characteristics and reporting their usage data annually to the City of St. Louis through Portfolio Manager