Leonardo DiCaprio is investing in a new eco-certified hotel in Herzliya. The Oscar-winning actor and environmental activist will join the project as an investor and partner, Hagag Real Estate Development announced last week.

The hotel, located in the Herzliya Marina, will be designed by famous architect David Rockwell and will include 180 suites (130 of them available as timeshare vacation homes) across two six-story buildings with a swimming pool in between.

According to the Hagag Group, DiCaprio will work to promote the hotel and ensure that it is designed to meet the highest environmental and hotel development standards.

“Green environmental development is a significant part of building communities that work in partnership with nature and not against it,” DiCaprio said. “As we seek to create a future that heads off the most severe effects of climate change, we need projects that push for new developments in environmental design… This project, designed by David Rockwell and which meets the gold standard of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), will serve as a model for environmentally friendly hotel development for the entire world.”

The new hotel is to be constructed in compliance with the US Green Building Council and certified by its LEED green building rating system, Hagag Group said.

LEED is a globally recognized symbol of commitment to environmental responsibility and provides a framework for creating highly efficient, cost-saving green buildings for almost any purpose.

Israel’s first LEED-certified building was Intel’s Development Design Center in Haifa, which was built in 2010 and received LEED Gold ranking. Since then, other LEED-certified buildings have gone up around the country including the Azouri Eco-Tower, Tel Aviv’s first “green” office building, and the Porter School of Environmental Studies building at Tel Aviv University, the country’s first LEED Platinum-certified edifice.

(via Israel21c)

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