About the Building

Shopping Centre Bonaire was constructed in 2000 and partially refurbished in 2016. It is an open air mall with the most complete offer of retail, leisure and restaurants in Valencia’s area.

It consists of three levels (underground car park, ground floor with retail and hypermarket and first floor with Cinema, restaurants and leisure) with more than 150 shops and 11mn visitors per year, that makes this Shopping Centre a meeting point for the local community and an important entity in the region attending its impact in employment generation, mobility and local community.

Bonaire is currently fully committed in developing a sustainable activity with many initiatives in terms of operational efficiency, partnerships with local entities and actions to benefit the surrounding community.

In particular Bonaire is aligned with the company’s CSR strategy “Better Places 2030”, detailed below, to minimise the shopping centre’s environmental impacts and to maximise its social benefits to its users and the local community through 3 main pillars:

• Better Buildings: Improve buildings energy efficiency, operation and sustainable transport.
• Better Communities: Work hand in hand with local entities, NGOs, authorities…etc.
• Better Collective Power: Enhance Bonaire community to reach future challenges.

In line with the above, BREEAM is a powerful methodology for develop and structure all those strategies. All BREEAM categories fit in any of those pillars, and helps us with the conversion Strategy>Objectives>Tasks.

About the BREEAM Assessment

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has a long history of implementing BREEAM standards and sustainability at all sites in its portfolio. This commitment has led to URW setting the highest standards as a minimum for its retail parks, namely BREEAM-in-Use ‘Outstanding’, which is regularly achieved on Part 2. Bonaire had already achieved this target on its previous assessment in 2016, so the goal for 2019 was to maintain this standard in all categories, while pushing for still more improvement wherever possible, which it achieved by recording the highest BREEAM-in-Use score for a Spanish asset of 94,99% on Part 2.

As early as 2007, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield devised an ambitious CSR strategy based on environmental best practices, social fairness and transparent governance. These commitments soon became an integral part of the operating, development and investment activities of the Group and its teams, enabling Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield to obtain the best scores on the market.

In 2016, Unibail-Rodamco decided to accelerate its CSR strategy by setting a new long-term ambition, “Better Places 2030”, to address the main challenges facing real estate:

1. Moving toward a low-carbon economy, in line with the COP 21 commitments, reducing emissions from operations by -80% by 2030;
2. Anticipating and introducing new modes of sustainable mobility;
3. Fully integrating the Group’s business activities in the regions, in partnership with the local communities.

BREEAM is a tool that makes a key contribution to achieve the targets mentioned above, so the strategy of the certification has been integrated in the corporate policy. Besides, the Group has achieved an unrivalled certification level for its portfolio, with 51 shopping centres BREEAM In-Use certified in Europe.

Categories with outstanding performance:

Environmental Challenges

The main challenge in Bonaire was to transform and manage a 20-year old building with the needs, requirements and standards of now and the next decades.

BREEAM has helped us align with Company’s Sustainability Strategy, giving Bonaire a structured guide to face all those challenges with specific items and measurable goals.

The benefits for the building and its users are clear: We have now a modern BMS for control and monitoring the building, the operational costs have decreased, and the building is more secure and friendly for the users.

What stood out during the assessment is how well a retail park in an edge-of-city commercial location, within site of the international airport, has been connected to its nearby community and residential zones and by extension to the city of Valencia as a whole. In the evening, the site remains vibrant, lively and popular, and the buses keep running to and from nearby Aldea and Valencia city centre, while runners and cyclists safely use the dedicated path to and from Aldea.

Also noticeable is how well the design and layout of the centre ensures that vehicle routes and car parks are separated and hidden from the shopping area, allowing shoppers, workers and other visitors to enjoy the healthy external environment in complete safety.

Finally, that what is essentially a developed, built-up site, can also represent an oasis of sustainable living and biodiversity in the area is a credit to the work of URW’s strategy, the centre management team and its service providers.

Benefits of BREEAM

“At Bonaire we have reduced the energy consumption by 15% compared to 2012 levels, mostly as a consequence of BREEAM guidelines. The decrease in running costs is not only related to the energy consumptions, but the excellence obtained in the operational management. In addition, the building is now more friendly for customers and users in terms of wellbeing, transport and landscape. We can say that Bonaire is ready to face future challenges and accomplish with the highest sustainable standards”.

– Víctor Millán, Technical Manager, SC Bonaire

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, the leading listed real estate company in Europe, has been a pioneer in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility. For more than ten years now, CSR (including BREEAM ideology) has been at the very heart of the Group’s strategy. It is a vehicle for progress for the hundreds of millions of visitors its shopping centres welcome every year. It is also a factor of competitiveness for the retailers who have put their trust in us. Finally, it is important to investors.

As of December 31, 2018, the Group had 47 owned and managed Shopping Centres certified under BREEAM “In-Use” in Europe, of which 22 were rated Outstanding”. Certified Shopping Centres account for over 3.3 million m2 consolidated GLA and correspond to 90% of the owned and managed Shopping Centres portfolio (in terms of certified assets’ value).

The early implementation of “green leases” since 2009 made the Group the leader of sustainable operations and showed its engagement with its stakeholders. The same applies to “green clauses” incorporated systematically into the contracts signed with its service providers. These clauses span all relevant aspects of operations, from the use of products with a low environmental impact to the recycling of waste, and a number of practices supporting energy and water savings. Through such clauses, suppliers were also encouraged to behave in an environmentally friendly manner.